In a landmark decision Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s order to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national, back to the United States after he was unlawfully deported to a high-security prison in El Salvador last month.
This ruling not only delivers a clear rebuke to federal immigration enforcement overreach but also underscores the Court’s commitment to upholding due process, even in politically charged deportation cases involving alleged gang ties.
Abrego Garcia was deported on March 15, 2025, to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT megaprison—a high-profile facility used to house suspected gang members, including affiliates of MS-13, the gang to which federal officials claimed he belonged. His attorneys, however, have long denied those allegations, and now the federal government itself admits that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order that should have prevented his deportation in the first place.
The government’s acknowledgment of error left little room for legal argument. As the Court stated plainly, Abrego Garcia’s removal was “therefore illegal.”
The High Court has now ordered federal officials to “facilitate” his release from Salvadoran custody and to handle his immigration case as if the unlawful deportation never occurred.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, though dissenting in part, agreed on one essential point: the government is obligated to give Abrego Garcia all the legal protections he was entitled to prior to his removal, including notice, a hearing, and a full opportunity to defend his case.
Her commentary serves as a reminder that due process cannot be cast aside, even in politically fraught environments. For all the posturing about immigration reform and deportation crackdowns, this case reinforces that constitutional protections still apply, regardless of status.
While media headlines have tied the case to gang deportations, the deeper details paint a more complicated picture.
According to court filings, Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador as a teenager to escape MS-13 violence that had targeted his family for extortion. He arrived in the U.S. illegally in 2011, eventually settling in Maryland with his older brother, a U.S. citizen. Over the next decade, he worked in construction, built a family with his U.S. citizen wife and stepchildren, and became a father himself.
He was arrested in 2019 during a Home Depot sting operation but was later released when no criminal charges were brought. His name, however, stayed in federal databases—and that false suspicion alone eventually led to his deportation years later, in March 2025, just after he picked up his autistic son from his grandmother’s house following a work shift.
Despite admitting to the unlawful deportation, the Justice Department criticized the judiciary, accusing “activist judges” of interfering with the President’s foreign policy prerogatives. The DOJ’s statement emphasized that foreign affairs rest with the Executive Branch, and that this case represents an inappropriate encroachment by the courts.
But this wasn’t a matter of foreign diplomacy. It was a matter of basic legality, and in this case, the government violated its own rules.
This ruling comes as the Trump administration pushes forward with aggressive immigration enforcement, aiming to remove millions of undocumented individuals through rapid deportation policies and by closing down loopholes used to delay removals.
Supporters of the administration see this case as an unfortunate exception, not a sign that the broader policy is flawed. Critics argue it’s proof that speed and suspicion are replacing legal standards and individual review, creating a system that wrongly targets people based on profiling and pressure—not evidence.
