The United States does not have to return a Maryland man who was accidentally deported to a high-security prison in El Salvador to U.S. soil by midnight, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in an administrative stay that temporarily pauses a judge's previous order.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday morning denied the administration's request for a stay of a judge's order demanding that Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a legal resident protected from deportation by a 2019 court order who has lived in the United States since 2011 — be returned to the country by 11:59 p.m. Monday.
The Supreme Court then issued an administrative stay Monday afternoon, with a request that Abrego Garcia’s team file a response by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Abrego Garcia was deported March 15 in what the Trump administration described as an “administrative error.“
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland issued the return order Friday, calling Abrego Garcia's deportation unlawful.
Attorney General Pam Bondi welcomed the Supreme Court's decision and vowed to continue to "protect the executive branch from judicial overreach."
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, stressed to NBC News that the Supreme Court's action was a temporary stay.
"It doesn’t say how many days or even hours it’s going to last," Sandoval-Moshenberg said. "But we have every confidence that the Supreme Court is going to resolve this matter as fast as possible."
He added that it has been a "yo-yo" weekend for Abrego Garcia’s family.
In a statement earlier Monday through the immigration advocacy group CASA, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said the 4th Circuit court ruling "gives me hope and even more encouragement to keep fighting."
"My children, family, and I will continue praying and seeking justice," she said.
On Saturday, the Justice Department asked the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the order and asked Xinis to stay her own ruling as appeals are underway. She denied that request Sunday.
In its filing to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration said, "This order — and its demand to accomplish sensitive foreign negotiations post-haste and effectuate Abrego Garcia’s return tonight — is unprecedented and indefensible."
Before the higher court decision, Sandoval-Moshenberg said that if his client isn’t back in the United States by midnight, they plan to ask Xinis to use the "full power of the court" to enforce her order.
The Trump administration argued that the midnight Monday deadline was "arbitrary" and "impossible."
"The United States’ negotiations with a foreign sovereign should not be put on a judicially mandated clock, least of all when matters of foreign terrorism and national security are at stake," the filing claimed. "It is the latest in a litany of injunctions or temporary restraining orders from the same handful of district courts that demand immediate or near-immediate compliance, on absurdly short deadlines."
John Sauer, who was confirmed as U.S. solicitor general last week, wrote: "The district court has no jurisdiction over the Government of El Salvador and thus no authority to order Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States."
A White House spokesman later Monday afternoon called the lower court ruling ordering that Abrego Garcia be returned to the United States an "erroneous ruling."
"The Supreme Court must continue to rein in the lower courts to ensure the Rule of Law prevails," White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a written statement.
The Trump administration has claimed that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 gang member, but his attorney disputed those claims. Sandoval-Moshenberg said Abrego Garcia came to the United States in 2011 to flee gun violence, and gang members threatened to kill him in an attempt to extort his parents. The attorney also noted Abrego Garcia does not have a criminal record in the United States or El Salvador.
Xinis rejected that stay effort on Sunday, writing the government’s detention of Abrego Garcia was "wholly lawless."
"Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention of the INA," Xinis wrote in her order. "Once there, U.S. officials secured his detention in a facility that, by design, deprives its detainees of adequate food, water, and shelter, fosters routine violence; and places him with his persecutors."
