The Supreme Court has unanimously rebuked the Trump administration’s warrantless capture and deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, the one place on the planet where it was illegal to send him. It has, moreover, rejected the Trump Justice Department’s untenable claim that neither the government nor the judiciary has jurisdiction to effectuate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States because he is now in the custody of El Salvador — which has detained him for nearly a month under conditions condemned by our own State Department.
The Court’s ruling was issued on Thursday evening. It is mostly an unsigned directive that Abrego Garcia be returned to American custody. (It would be more accurate, I contend, to say direct American custody since I believe he is already in constructive American custody, as explained below.) That succinct opinion is supplemented by a “statement” from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by her progressive colleagues, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
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