WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily halt a judge’s order requiring his administration to return by the end of the day a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was erroneously deported to El Salvador.

US District Judge Paula Xinis on Friday ordered the administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the end of Monday, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family. A lower federal appeals court — the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals — declined on Monday to freeze the judge’s order.

Xinis had found that the US government had no lawful authority to detain and deport Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in Maryland legally with a work permit, and ordered his return by 11:59pm on Monday. He was deported on March 15.

The Justice Department in a Supreme Court filing said the judge’s order amounted to judicial overreach.

“The United States cannot guarantee success in sensitive international negotiations in advance, least of all when a court imposes an absurdly compressed, mandatory deadline that vastly complicates the give-and-take of foreign-relations negotiations,” department lawyers wrote. “The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge’s bidding,” they added.

The White House and administration officials have accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which Trump’s administration has designated a foreign terrorist organisation.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2025