Donald Trump Is Defying The Supreme Court

President Donald Trump and his administration refuse to take action to get Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant wrongly rendered to the Salvadoran prison CECOT, out of El Salvador and back to the United States. In doing so, they are openly defying a Supreme Court order.

The question of whether and when Trump would find himself in defiance of a Supreme Court order has stalked the early months of his second administration. By pushing the law well beyond its limits, this confrontation seemed destined to happen. But the administration and the court have so far sought to avoid such a conflict, with the administration pretending to abide by court rulings through deflection and minimal compliance and the court deferring to the administration as though it is normal.

That is impossible to avoid now, unless the court chooses to stand down. In an order issued on April 11, a unanimous Supreme Court declared that a district court decision “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

That is pretty straightforward. The government must abide by the district court’s orders to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s “release from custody in El Salvador” and bring him back to the U.S. “to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

But Trump and his administration are spinning this decision as though they won and do not have to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.

In an appearance alongside Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Trump claimed that the Supreme Court ruled “in our favor” on Monday. Attorney General Pam Bondi stated that “Two courts ruled that [Abrego Garcia] was a member of MS-13,” and that the only thing the Supreme Court required of the administration was to “provide a plane” if Bukele chose to release him.

For his part, Bukele dismissed any suggestion he would release the Maryland man as “preposterous,” asking how he could “smuggle” a “terrorist” into the United States.

This is not what the record shows regarding accusations against Abrego Garcia, nor what the Supreme Court ruled. However, the way the court wrote its opinion provided Trump with the opening to take this defiant posture.

Abrego Garcia was removed along with over 250 Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants on three planes to CECOT on March 15. He had been arrested by ICE in a targeted operation in his home state of Maryland because he was accused, without evidence, of being a member of the gang MS-13 in 2019.

Abrego Garcia later challenged his detention, and the immigration judge found his testimony, including his refutation of gang affiliation, “credible” and “free of embellishment.” He was granted withholding removal status, which prevented him from being removed to El Salvador.

The Trump administration, however, sent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador anyway, to languish in prison for the rest of his life based on a discredited accusation of gang affiliation made six years ago.

Lawyers for the Department of Justice repeatedly admitted in court that Abrego Garcia had been wrongfully removed. But the administration has denied it has any power to effectuate his return.

In disobeying the Supreme Court’s order to get Abrego Garcia out of CECOT and back to the U.S., the administration is now making false statements about what the court ordered while taking an openly defiant posture against the district court hearing the case.

Following the Supreme Court’s April 11 order, District Judge Paula Xinis issued an order declaring the Trump administration in violation of her previous order to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. She further ordered administration lawyers to provide daily updates on Abrego Garcia’s physical location, what steps the administration has taken to facilitate his return and what steps it will take and when.

In the two days since, Department of Justice lawyers have not fully answered Xinis’ questions. On April 12, the administration reported that Abrego Garcia was alive and in CECOT in El Salvador, but did not provide any answers to Xinis’ second and third questions. Again, on April 13, the administration filed a daily status report that did not answer any of Xinis’ questions.

Instead, the administration declared in that status report that it doesn’t have to return Abrego Garcia because he is supposedly an MS-13 gang member, according to the disproved gang affiliation allegation, and stated that “Abrego Garcia is no longer eligible for withholding of removal because of his membership in MS-13 which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

This is a wholly new assertion from the administration, entirely based on an accusation that a judge found to be false. Notably, the administration’s filing omits this fact. It notes the initial judge’s ruling that did not challenge the MS-13 accusation, but it does not mention that another judge found the gang accusation to be false in a subsequent trial where Abrego Garcia won withholding removal status.

On April 12, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed a brief stating that “the Government defied an order of this Court, and of the Supreme Court, by refusing to provide even basic information about Abrego Garcia’s current location and status and what it is doing to comply with the injunction.” They asked Xinis to order the administration to immediately take steps to obey both courts’ orders, begin discovery proceedings and determine whether the administration should be held in contempt.

The administration responded to this brief by declaring that the Supreme Court order did not require it to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. and that Xinis did not have the power to order them to do so. This response contained multiple false assertions and mischaracterizations of what the Supreme Court had ordered.

At the same time, the administration’s intransigence is a sign of how the Supreme Court bungled its decision in the case.

In order to evade any responsibility to return Abrego Garcia, the DOJ response aims to define the word “facilitate” in such a way that it mangles the meaning of both the Supreme Court’s and the district court’s orders.

“Taking ‘all available steps to facilitate’ the return of Abrego Garcia is thus best read as taking all available steps to remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here,” the response states. “Indeed, no other reading of ‘facilitate’ is tenable—or constitutional—here.”

This effort to define “facilitate” does not, however, account for what the Supreme Court actually ordered the administration to do. It did not order the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. in the sense of not actively standing in the way of his return. Instead, the court ordered the administration to actively “‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

In short, bring him back and make sure he gets due process.

These are two entirely different things. There is no world where the administration’s definition of “facilitate” aligns with obeying either court’s orders.

The reason the administration can even make the claim for its mangled definition of “facilitate” gets at how the Supreme Court royally screwed this case up.

In its unanimous decision, the court did order the administration to get Abrego Garcia out of CECOT and to the U.S., but it also stated that the district court that first ordered Abrego Garcia’s return “should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

The DOJ response jumped on this assertion by claiming that the courts do not have the power to order the administration to do anything that relates to foreign countries. Its reasoning? Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision in Trump v. U.S., the case that provided Trump with immunity from prosecution for official acts as president.

“The federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner. … Such power is “conclusive and preclusive,” and beyond the reach of the federal courts’ equitable authority,” the DOJ response states, citing Trump v. U.S.

The Trump v. U.S. decision, released shortly before the 2024 election, effectively declared that anything a president does as part of their “official acts” is inherently legal. The administration has since seized on this sweeping vision of executive power to justify all of its illegal and unconstitutional actions when challenged in court.

Courts have some power to challenge a presidential administration in defiance of its rulings. They can hold administration officials or agencies in contempt, withhold their funding or even jail officials. These actions are extremely rare, but if the court does not step in and exercise its authority in this case, it would set an extremely dangerous precedent.

If Trump is allowed to defy this ruling, it will have stark and dangerous implications for all Americans. The government would be able to claim that anyone is a gang member, without evidence, deny them due process and then ship them to a foreign prison for a life sentence where the law no longer applies. Such an act, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Constitution and the rule of law in the United States.