The Trump administration filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court, asking it to halt a judge’s order demanding the return of an illegal immigrant believed to be a member of MS-13.
“While the United States concedes that removal to El Salvador was an administrative error, that does not license district courts to seize control over foreign relations, treat the Executive Branch as a subordinate diplomat, and demand that the United States let a member of a foreign terrorist organization into America tonight,” the filing says. “For starters, because MS-13 members such as Abrego Garcia have since been designated members of a foreign terrorist organization, they are no longer eligible for withholding of removal under 8 U.S.C. 1231(b)(3)(B).”
“This order—and its demand to accomplish sensitive foreign negotiations post-haste, and effectuate Abrego Garcia’s return tonight—is unprecedented and indefensible,” the Trump administration wrote, noting that the order is “nothing new,” but is merely the “latest in a litany of injunctions or temporary restraining orders from the same handful of district courts that demand immediate or near-immediate compliance, on absurdly short deadlines.”
On Sunday evening, Judge Paula Xinis denied the Trump administration’s request to lift her order requiring the return of the MS-13 gang member.
“Defendants have claimed—without any evidence—that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 and then housed him among the chief rival gang, Barrio 18,” Xinis wrote. “Not to mention that Barrio 18 is the very gang whose years’ long persecution of Abrego Garcia resulted in his withholding from removal to El Salvador. To be sure, Abrego Garcia will suffer irreparably were he not accorded his requested relief.”
