The Trump administration on Sunday evening doubled down on its assertion that a federal judge cannot force it to bring back to the United States a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month.
In a brief legal filing, the Justice Department reiterated its view that courts lack the ability to dictate steps that the White House should take in seeking to return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to U.S. soil, because the president alone has broad powers to handle foreign policy.
“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,” lawyers for the department wrote. “That is the ‘exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.’”
The position taken by Trump officials was not the first time they had tried to defy efforts compelling them to seek Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador. Still, their continued recalcitrance meant that Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, would for now remain at the CECOT prison in El Salvador, where he was sent with scores of other migrants on March 15.
The administration’s stubbornness was also likely to heighten tensions between the White House and the judge overseeing the case, Paula Xinis. Judge Xinis has scheduled a hearing to discuss next steps in the matter on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Maryland.
The conflict has persisted even though the Supreme Court last week unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody. Trump officials have in fact already admitted that they made an “administrative error” when they put Mr. Abrego Garcia on the plane to El Salvador in the first place.
The dispute — just one of the legal battles involving Mr. Trump’s deportation plans — threatened to spill over into an official visit from President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who is set to meet with President Trump on Monday.
When the Supreme Court ruled on the case last week, it seemed at first like a victory for Mr. Abrego Garcia and his family. But the court’s order contained an ambiguous passage that Trump officials have seized on in their ongoing effort to avoid doing much of anything to ensure his return to the United States.
In their ruling, the justices agreed with Judge Xinis that the White House should do what it could to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release, but they never defined the specific steps officials should take to actually “effectuate” the plan.
Indeed, they sent that question back to Judge Xinis, cautioning her that as she clarified what the administration should do, her decision needed to be made “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
On Saturday, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked Judge Xinis to order the administration to send a plane to El Salvador to pick him up and to have Trump officials travel with him to “ensure his safe passage.”
But lawyers for the Justice Department, in their filing on Sunday, said that the administration should not have to do any of that because it would intrude on dealings between the White House and the Salvadoran government.
“All of those requested orders involve interactions with a foreign sovereign — and potential violations of that sovereignty,” the lawyers wrote. “But as explained, a federal court cannot compel the executive branch to engage in any mandated act of diplomacy or incursion upon the sovereignty of another nation.”
