Jennifer VasquezOn March 12, Kilmar Abrego Garcia went home with her young son in Maryland when he was stopped by US immigration agents and customs application (ICE).
The agents took G -n Garcia in custody, after which they were closed in Louisiana and Texas detention facilities.
According to a federal judge, after three days, “without any notice, legal process or hearing”, G -n Garcia ended up in her native El Salvador in a scandalous prison known for the gang housing members.
The government said it was deported because of an “administrative error”.
However, G -n Garcia remains closed in El Salvador, as lawyers discuss the unusual intricacies of the case.
A court in Maryland has ordered G -n Garcia to be returned to the United States, but Trump's employees claim that they cannot force El Salvador to return G -n Garcia. The administration also claims that the judge, who ordered his return, did not have the power to do so.
On Monday, the Supreme Court placed a temporary detention of a lower court orders while considering the issue.
Immigration experts say that since US President Donald Trump is taking a firm approach to illegal immigration, this case has the potential to increase the proper process of immigrants.
“If the US Supreme Court adopts a position (Trump's administration), it will completely distort any rule of law in the immigration process,” Maureen Swey, Director of the Immigrant Justice Center at the University of Maryland, before the BBC.
“Because they could take anyone at any time and send them anywhere without any consequences.”
Trump's administration is repulsed back
US District Judge Paula Sinis writes on Sunday that ICE employees do not follow the procedures in the Immigration and Nationality Act when they deported G -n Garcia in Salvador.
She rules that the US should return it before midnight on Monday. The Court of Appeal of the fourth round agreed, saying that the United States “has no legal powers to grab a person who is legally present in the United States off the street.”
Still, Trump's administration claims that he cannot comply, saying that the filing of Judge Sinin is beyond her jurisdiction.
“Neither the Federal District Court nor the United States have the authority to tell the government of El Salvador what to do,” US lawyer D John Sauer wrote in appeal before the Supreme Court.
Nicole Hallet, a professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Chicago, said that although true – US judges cannot order El Salvador to take action – they can order the US government to return to Garcia.
She also said the United States had previously facilitated the return of wrongly deported persons.
Prof. Hallet also questioned the government's claim that the United States is powerless to force El Salvador to release G -n Garcia, citing an agreement between the two countries.
The United States, according to the Trump administration, paid El Salvador government $ 6 million for the placement of prisoners it sends, according to CBS News, the US partner of the BBC. Higher officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself publicly advertised the agreement.
“Almost as if the Salvadorant government acts as an agent of the US government,” G -Ja Hallet said, arguing that this makes the release more right.
G -n Garcia's attorneys say that since El Salvador detains G -n Garcia “on the direct request and according to the US financial compensation, the court may order the US government to request its return.
Mr. Garcia is among the 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadoran, deported under the Trump administration, to make the famous mega-prison of El Salvador. Officials say they are members of the gang and are therefore subject to deportation.
G -n Garcia, who is married to a US citizen, has no links to bands and has never been charged with a crime, his lawyer says.
He was also protected by a “refusal of removal”, which means that the US government cannot send him back to Salvador because he may encounter harm. The order dates back to 2019, when ICE first took Mr. Garcia in custody and claims that he belonged to the criminal organization MS-13, a claim that he denied at that time.
Such orders are common, immigration lawyers told the BBC and are an alternative to asylum protection.
“It was an illegal action to return him to the country where he could not be returned,” says Amelia Wilson, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Pace University.
In the end, a judge provided G -n Garcia in 2019 after “testifying to how he was a victim of violence with bands in El Salvador when he was a teenager, and he came to the United States to escape all this,” writes his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura in Defit in March 2025.
The lawyer of the Ministry of Justice, Eresi, Raventi, acknowledged that at the time “the government does not appeal this decision, so it is final.”
The Trump administration now reiterates that Mr Garcia belongs to the MS-13, but Judge Sinin said that the government had made this request “without any evidence” and did not issue an order for removal or order.
Supreme Court Exhibitions
The Trump administration continues to press its case to the highest court in the nation, creating a potential expense for the White House deportation strategy.
Chief Justice John Roberts has issued an administrative stay on Monday night, making more court decisions while the US Supreme Court examines the government's complaint.
President Trump has declared his stay as a victory, writing for the truth social that the decision allowed the president to “secure our borders and to protect our families and our country, ourselves.”
Meanwhile, immigration attorneys are closely monitoring the case of G -n Garcia, considered a test of how much power the administration over immigration in the United States can exercise.
“If the Trump administration is trying to remove these persons by bypassing the immigration courts,” said G -jj Wilson, “there is a direct and obvious line between what they do and the administration's efforts to usurp the judicial and proper process.”