The US Supreme Court has ordered the government to “facilitate” the return of a wrongly deported Salvadoran man, in a decision seen as a small victory against President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, was living in the eastern state of Maryland until he became one of more than 200 people sent to a prison in El Salvador last month as part of Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Most of the deportees were suspected members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has declared a “foreign terrorist organisation”.
But Justice Department lawyers later admitted that Garcia, who is married to a United States citizen, was deported due to an “administrative error”.
In a decision issued on Thursday, the conservative-majority Supreme Court ordered the government to “‘facilitate” Garcia’s release from custody in an El Salvador prison “and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador”.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, a lawyer for Abrego Garcia, hailed the court’s ruling, saying “the rule of law prevailed”.
Garcia had been living in the US under protected legal status since 2019 when a judge ruled he should not be deported because he could be harmed in his home country.
Following his deportation and internment in the notorious CECOT counterterrorist prison, lower courts had ordered that the US government return him to the US by midnight on Monday.
The Supreme Court put that order on hold hours before the deadline, after the administration requested an emergency ruling.
Source: Reuters.com
