Can the United States return Kilmar Abro Garcia from El Salvador?

On March 12, Kilmar Abugo Garcia was driving his car with his young son in Maryland when he was arrested by US agents for immigration and customs (ICE).

The agents took Mr. Garcia in the reservation, then they closed it to the detention facilities in Louisiana and Tixas.

According to a federal judge, three days later, “without any notice, legal process or hearing,” Mr. Garcia found himself in his hometown of Salvador in a notorious prison known as housing gang members.

The government said it was deported because of a “administrative error.”

However, Mr. Garcia is still imprisoned in El Salvador while lawyers discuss the unusual complications of the case.

The Maryland Court ordered Mr. Garcia to return to the United States, but Trump officials have argued that they could not force Salvador to return Mr. Garcia. The administration also argued that the judge who requested his return lacks the authority to do so.

On Monday, the Supreme Court set a temporary comment on the minimum orders of the court while hearing the matter.

Immigration experts say that while US President Donald Trump follows a strict approach to illegal immigration, this issue has the ability to increase legal procedures for immigrants.

“If the US Supreme Court accepts the” Trump Administration) position, it will completely confuse any law in the immigration process, “Mourin Sweeney, Director of the Chakkkkun Center at the University of Chakkkun at the University of Maryland, told BBC.

“Because they can pick up anyone, at any time, and send them anywhere without any repercussions at all.”

On Sunday, the American boycott judge, Paula Shinis, wrote that ice officials did not follow the procedures in the Immigration and Nationality Law when they deported Mr. Garcia to El Salvador.

It ruled that the United States should return it before midnight on Monday. The Appeals Court in the fourth district agreed that the United States “has no legal authority to legally present a person in the United States outside the street.”

However, the Trump administration argued that it could not comply, saying that Judge Shinis’s introduction outside its judicial mandate.

“The Federal Province Court or the United States of the authority of the Silvador government should not be done,” said the American Attorney General De John Sawir.

Nicole Halit, a professor at the University of Chicago Law Faculty, said that although it is true – the American boycott judges cannot order El Salvador to take action – they can order the US government to return Mr. Garcia.

She also said that the United States had previously facilitated the return of individuals who were accidentally deported.

Professor Halilet also asked about the government’s claim that the United States was unable to force El Salvador to release Mr. Garcia, noting an agreement between the two countries.

Under the Trump administration, the United States has paid the Selfador government $ 6 million to house the prisoners it sends, according to CBS News, the American PBC partner. Senior officials such as Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Trump himself publicly arranged this arrangement.

“It seems as if the Salvadian government is working as an agent of the United States government,” said Ms. Halilet.

Mr. Garcia’s lawyers have argued that, given that El Salvador was holding Mr. Garcia “based on direct demand and according to financial compensation” from the United States, the court can order the US government to request his return.

Mr. Garcia is among the 238 Venezuelan and 23 Salvadorians who were deported under the Trump administration to Sulfa Sulfador, the huge bad. Officials claim that they are members of the gang and are thus being deported.

His lawyer says that Mr. Garcia, who is married to an American citizen, has no gang links and has never been accused of a crime.

He was also protected by “blocking removal”, which means that the US government could not return it to El Salvador because it may face harm. It is due to 2019, when Ice First Garcia took the reservation and claimed that he belonged to the MS-13 criminal organization, a claim he denied at that time.

These orders are common, as the BBC immigration lawyers told a resort to protecting asylum.

“It was an illegal work, that the United States would return to the country where it could not be returned,” said Amelia Wilson, director of the Judge Migration Clinic at the University of Pies.

A judge eventually gave Mr. Garcia the Order of 2019 after “he witnessed how he was a victim of gang violence in El Salvador when he was a teenager and came to the United States to escape from all of this.” His wife, Jennifer Vasquiz, wrote a surah, in a code in March 2025.

Justice’s lawyer Erez Revini acknowledged that at the time “the government did not resume this decision, so it is final.”

The Trump administration has now repeated allegations that Mr. Garcia belongs to the MS-13, but Judge Shinis said that the government provided this claim “without any evidence” and did not provide an order or an order to remove.

The Trump administration continues to pressure its case to the highest court in the country, which led to a possible confrontation with the White House deportation strategy.

The chief judge John Roberts issued an administrative residence on Monday night, stopping the provisions of the lower court, while the US Supreme Court considers the government’s appeal.

President Trump described the residence as a victory, and writing on the social truth that allowed the main government to “secure our borders, protect our families and our country itself.”

Meanwhile, immigration lawyers are closely monitoring the case of Mr. Garcia, considering it a test of the extent of the force that the administration can exercise on American immigration.

Ms. Wilson said: “If the Trump administration is trying to remove these individuals by bypassing the immigration courts, there is a direct and clear line between what they are doing, and effort by the administration to calm the judiciary and the name completely.”