WASHINGTON: US Chief Justice John Roberts agreed Monday to pause a midnight deadline for the Trump administration to return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The temporary order comes hours after a Justice Department emergency appeal to the Supreme Court arguing US District Judge Paula Xinis overstepped her authority when she ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to the United States.
The administration has conceded that Abrego Garcia should not have been sent to El Salvador because an immigration judge found he likely would face persecution by local gangs.
But he is no longer in US custody and the government has no way to get him back, the administration argued.
Xinis gave the administration until just before midnight to "facilitate and effectuate" Abrego Garcia's return.
"The district court's injunction—which requires Abrego Garcia's release from the custody of a foreign sovereign and return to the United States by midnight on Monday—is patently unlawful," Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in court papers, casting the order as one in "a deluge of unlawful injunctions" judges have issued to slow President Donald Trump's agenda.
The Justice Department appeal was directed to Roberts because he handles appeals from Maryland.
Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to use an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants, but said they must get a court hearing before they are taken from the United States.
In a bitterly divided decision, the court said the administration must give Venezuelans who it claims are gang members "reasonable time" to go to court. But the conservative majority said the legal challenges must take place in Texas, instead of a Washington courtroom.
The federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, denied the administration's request for a stay. "There is no question that the government screwed up here," Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote in a brief opinion accompanying the unanimous denial.
The White House has described Abrego Garcia's deportation as an "administrative error" but has also cast him an MS-13 gang member. Attorneys for Abrego Garcia said there is no evidence he was in MS-13.
"The Executive branch may not seize individuals from the streets, deposit them in foreign prisons in violation of court orders, and then invoke the separation of powers to insulate its unlawful actions from judicial scrutiny," Abrego Garcia's lawyers wrote in a response filed moments after Roberts issued his temporary pause.
Xinis wrote that the decision to arrest him and send him to El Salvador appears to be "wholly lawless," explaining that little to no evidence supports a "vague, uncorroborated" allegation that Abrego Garcia was once an MS-13 member.
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national who has never been charged or convicted of any crime, was detained by immigration agents and deported last month.
He had a permit from DHS to legally work in the US and was a sheet metal apprentice pursuing a journeyman license, his attorney said. His wife is a US citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge barred the US from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.
A Justice Department lawyer conceded in a court hearing that Abrego Garcia should not have been deported. Attorney General Pam Bondi later removed the lawyer, Erez Reuveni, from the case and placed him on leave.
