Politico

Trump administration contends it has no duty to return illegally deported man to US
Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

Updated Sun, April 13, 2025 at 6:04 PM EDT3 min read

The Trump administration insisted Sunday that it has no legal obligation to arrange for the return of a Maryland man illegally deported from the United States, arguing that a Supreme Court ruling last week only requires officials to admit him into the country if he makes it back from a high-security prison in El Salvador.

Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge that they don't interpret the Supreme Court's Thursday ruling - that the administration "facilitate" Kilmar Abrego Garcia's release - as obligating the administration to do anything more than adjust his immigration status to admit him if El Salvador's government chooses to release him.

With El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele set to meet President Donald Trump Monday, DOJ attorneys argued the courts have no power to require the administration to engage with the Salvadoran government to reach a diplomatic solution. They contend such a potential order would amount to a violation of the separation of powers and an intrusion into what they allege is unfettered presidential power to conduct foreign relations.

"All of those requested orders involve interactions with a foreign sovereign - and potential violations of that sovereignty," Justice Department attorneys wrote in a seven-page submission to U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. "[A] federal court cannot compel the Executive Branch to engage in any mandated act of diplomacy or incursion upon the sovereignty of another nation."

The administration's position suggests officials do not view the Supreme Court's order as compelling them to seek Abrego Garcia's return. The Salvadoran native entered the country illegally around 2011 and had been living in Maryland. The Trump administration has admitted it deported him to El Salvador in violation of a 2019 immigration court order barring his deportation to that country. Though Abrego Garcia was denied asylum, a judge found he could not be sent to his home country because of a legitimate fear of persecution by a local gang.

The administration continued Sunday to flout a Friday order from Xinis to deliver "daily updates" to the court describing its efforts to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. Sunday's update from Evan Katz, the assistant director of removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the administration had "no updates" for the judge. A day earlier, in a similarly threadbare update, the administration turned to Michael Kozak, the State Department's senior bureau official in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, who said Abrego Garcia was still alive in El Salvador's CECOT prison.

The administration is also bucking demands from Abrego Garcia's attorneys that officials detail the arrangement to ship hundreds of foreign nationals to a notorious prison in El Salvador. One of the Sunday filings insists those details are classified and could be subject to attorney-client and state secrets privileges.

"It would be inappropriate for this Court to hastily order production of these sensitive documents," Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign wrote.

The administration also said it would resist efforts by Xinis to demand testimony from officials about their thinking on Abrego Garcia's potential return, saying such disclosures "could interfere with ongoing diplomatic discussions - particularly in the context of President Bukele's ongoing trip to the United States."

Still, the administration's narrow view of its obligations under the Supreme Court's ruling appears to up the stakes of a hearing Xinis has scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to assess the steps officials are taking to arrange for Abrego Garcia's return.

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Dora Hates You

And the SCOTUS left it so vague, Trump can do as he pleases. A law abiding citizen was sent to a prison in another country. This can happen to any of us.

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I was right.

This is fucking bonkers.

We're not in a free country anymore.



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Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Denis Diderot

I am not sure we ever really were. Now, we are under a Pseudo quasi dictator that has been handed the keys to the most powerful country in the world, and he is driving like a mean old man with dementia hooked on adoral.

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It was fun while it lasted.

If SCOTUS doesn't step up here, they will have castrated themselves.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

Dictator of El Salvador promised to hold the hostage for Trump during his visit to the Whitehouse today

Trump tells President Nayib Bukele that he needs to build about five more prisons as Convict Trump wants to send him home grown prisoners.

This was captured after the meeting during a hot mike moment.

Let me ask the cult, would sending US citizens to foreign prisons be the move of a fascist president?


BTW - President Nayib Bukele didn't wear a suit...what a disrespectful slut.


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If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC - KV


Edited: 04/14/2025 at 12:29 PM by Bamboo

What cards does Bukele have? Did he thank Trump?

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

I do believe that John Roberts has let his dog off the chain, and it is terrorizing the world, and he doesn't know what do now. It was nice knowing you, so called democracy.



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It was fun while it lasted.

This guy was deported by mistake. That seems to be a fact even the Trump dipshits accept. He was deported and placed into a supermax prison without ever having committed a crime. It's one thing to send a guy to El Salvador who was legally here, it's a whole damn other thing to send him to a notorious prison for gang members where no one seems to get out. The Trump DOJ says that the mistake is now out of their jurisdiction so it's beyond review. Bukele says that he cannot smuggle a terrorist back into the U.S. and says no one can make him. So now we have a man sentenced to the harshest prison in El Salvador without ever even having a hearing.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

They are so full of shit. We just got prisoners from Russia. Is Trump admitting that this banana republic dictator is more powerful than Trump himself?

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It was fun while it lasted.

Edited: 04/15/2025 at 04:14 AM by gdudewe

Trump caught on hot mic tell the Dictator of El Salvador to build more prisons because, he wants to send "home grown" prisoners to prisons outside the US.

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It was fun while it lasted.

This is the president and administration that the MAGA voted for?
Ruin the economy, break trust with our allies, ruin international diplomacy, ignore the constitution, ignore our judicial branch, bypass our legislative branch, break our gov't infrastructure so we can't operate efficiently (ironic, huh?), break our medical research, break our top universities....etc. etc. etc.

Sounds like Putin's wish list....


>>>>>>
As a reminder:
The principle of "separate but equal" refers to the division of power among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, where each branch has distinct responsibilities but operates within a system of checks and balances. This system prevents any one branch from becoming too powerful by ensuring that each branch has the ability to limit the actions of the others.

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If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC - KV

The others weren't given trials either. They have been sentenced to life because Trump thought they looked like bad people.

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I was right.

It's very interesting to see Trump, the wannabe strong man and tough guy, act like an impotent bureaucrat on this. So powerless. So weak. He could get this guy back with a phone call but he just can't. The SCOTUS is watching and hoping that they too can wash their hands of this and jettison the whole thing as a jurisdictional issue with no regard for the jurisdiction it occurred in. It's a parade of finger pointers, castrata, bureaucrats and internet paper tigers watching it all from a very safe distance as lady liberty is raped and yells for help.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

Brown people

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It was fun while it lasted.

Trumplovski mention he wants to see the people that vandalized the Leon's EV's sent to El Salvador.

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It was fun while it lasted.

Edited: 04/15/2025 at 06:14 AM by gdudewe

President Bukkake?

Yeah, I think he "thanked" trump.

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Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Denis Diderot

I think his name is now Bukkake,

and with that name, you can guess what he did for Trump.

Damn, Rusty "beat" me to it!

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You can't spell "HATRED" without

"RED HAT"

Edited: 04/15/2025 at 11:59 AM by Pagerow

How long do you think it will be before a person that doesn't have a Hispanic last name gets deported to a concentration camp by the United States government?

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It was fun while it lasted.