A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court backed a lower-court order requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the release from custody of a Maryland man who was, ahem, mistakenly dumped in a notorious El Salvador prison last month.
Unanimous, as in, the three pre-Trump MAGA judges, the three MAGA judges installed on the court by Trump, and then the three liberal judges all voted on the same side.
Next question: does the Trump administration comply?
The lower-court judge who’d issued the original order in the case of Kilmar Abrego García, Paula Xinis, has already acted to amend her earlier order, in accord with the direction of the Supremes, directing the administration to “take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible.”
If this sounds like there’s a legal loophole akin to the “all deliberate speed” of the 1954 Supreme Court order in Brown v. Board to desegregate U.S. schools, yeah.
There were still segregated schools in violation of the Brown order into the 1970s, remember.
ICYMI
Kaine, Warner lead push to get Trump administration to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Xinis did order the administration to file a declaration confirming Abrego Garcia’s location by 9:30 a.m. Friday, with an in-person heading scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday.
The wiggle room for the Trump administration comes in the language of the Supreme Court order noting the “due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
A Justice Department spokesperson gave us the indication of how the Trumpers are going to use this to slow-walk Abrego García back home.
“As the Supreme Court correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the president to conduct foreign affairs,” the spokesman said. “By directly noting the deference owed to the executive branch, this ruling once again illustrates that activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy.”
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Chris Graham
