[Source: Reuters]

The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halted on Monday a judge’s order requiring President Donald Trump’s administration to return by the end of the day a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador.

Chief Justice John Roberts, acting on behalf of the court, paused the order by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis that the administration return Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the end of Monday, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family challenging the legality of his deportation.

The court’s action, called an administrative stay, gives the nine justices additional time to consider the administration’s more formal request to block the judge’s order while litigation in the case continues.

Earlier on Monday, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the administration’s request to freeze the judge’s order.

Xinis found that the U.S. government had no lawful authority to detain and deport Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in Maryland legally with a work permit, and ordered his return by 11:59 p.m. on Monday. Abrego Garcia was deported on March 15 on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador that also included alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The Justice Department in a Supreme Court filing on Monday stated that while Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador through “administrative error,” his actual removal from the United States “was not error.” The error, department lawyers wrote, was in removing him specifically to El Salvador despite a deportation protection order he received in 2019.

Justice Department lawyers said that Abrego Garcia, as an alleged member of the criminal gang MS-13, is no longer eligible for that protection.

Trump’s administration has designated MS-13 a foreign terrorist organization.

There are no pending charges against Abrego Garcia, who is married to an American citizen with whom he is raising a U.S. citizen child, in addition to his wife’s two children from a prior relationship. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have denied the allegation that he is part of a gang.

Abrego Garcia received a 2019 judgment in the United States granting him protection from deportation to El Salvador after an immigration judge determined he would face persecution from gangs in his home country if returned.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in a Supreme Court filing on Monday that there is “no evidence in the record of this case supporting the government’s contention that it cannot bring him back.”

“Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime, in any country. He is not wanted by the government of El Salvador. He sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafka-esque mistake,” his lawyers wrote.

Xinis found that the 2019 order prohibiting Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was still in place. In the judge’s written decision, opens new tab issued on Sunday, Xinis wrote, “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention or removal.” The judge called the removal of Abrego Garcia “wholly lawless.”

The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that the judge’s order amounted to judicial overreach.

“The United States cannot guarantee success in sensitive international negotiations in advance, least of all when a court imposes an absurdly compressed, mandatory deadline that vastly complicates the give-and-take of foreign-relations negotiations,” department lawyers wrote.

“The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge’s bidding,” they added.

The Trump administration on March 15 deported more than 200 people to El Salvador, where they are being detained in the country’s massive anti-terrorism prison under a deal in which the United States is paying President Nayib Bukele’s government $6 million.

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