The Trump administration is arguing that it is not required to bring a suspected MS-13 gangbanger back to the United States after he was repatriated to his home country of El Salvador.
The federal courts have no authority to dictate White House foreign policy, the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrote in the latest court filings regarding Abrego Garcia, an illegal migrant who was deported back to El Salvador in March and sent to the Central American country’s infamous mega-prison. Lawyers for Garcia had demanded that the Trump administration facilitate his return back to the United States.
“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 DOJ wrote in a court filing Sunday. “That is the ‘exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.’”
Garcia’s lawyers are making demands that exceed constitutional authority because they are asking federal U.S. officials to extract from a sovereign nation one of their own citizens from their custody, the Trump administration argued in court.
“Such power is ‘conclusive and preclusive,’ and beyond the reach of the federal courts’ equitable authority,” the DOJ said. “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.”
The court battle over Garcia’s fate began when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents apprehended him in March and quickly transferred him to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison in El Salvador built specifically to detain members of organized crime syndicates such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua.
Garcia unlawfully entered the U.S. in 2011 and made his way to the Maryland area, according to court documents. Accusations that he was associated with MS-13 began when he was arrested in 2019 by the Prince George’s County Police Department in Maryland, with an informant telling local law enforcement Garcia’s alleged gang nickname and rank within the gang.
Garcia was eventually granted withholding of removal, and an immigration judge in 2019 agreed to his claims that he would face torture if deported back to El Salvador. The benefit, which is similar to asylum, barred the government from repatriating him back to his home country and allowed him to work in the U.S.
While the Trump administration has acknowledged that Garcia’s deportation was the result of an administrative error, the White House has also stood by his removal, arguing that he is a member of MS-13 — a designated foreign terrorist organization — and should remain in law enforcement custody.
“The administration maintains the position that this individual, who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country, was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier in April. “Fact number two, we also have credible evidence that this individual was involved in human trafficking.”
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama administration appointee, ordered the administration earlier in April to return Garcia quickly back to the U.S., but the Supreme Court pumped the brakes on her mandated deadline. However, the nation’s highest court on Thursday ruled that the administration must facilitate his return while ordering Judge Xinis to clarify what she meant by effectuate “with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
The back-and-forth comes as El Salvador President Nayib Bukele is set to meet President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Bukele has proved instrumental in Trump’s large-scale deportation agenda, with the El Salvadoran leader agreeing to take in Trump’s deportees of suspected MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members, and other allegedly heinous criminal illegal migrants.
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