Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has granted the Trump administration’s request for an administrative stay that, for now, blocks a federal judge’s order that the government return to the United States an illegal alien it deported to El Salvador with no due process and despite a 2019 immigration court order prohibiting the Salvadoran national’s repatriation.
An administrative stay is not a ruling on the merits; it is just a brief stopping of the clock so that the Court can determine whether and how to intervene in the case. The administration’s emergency petition, filed by the Justice Department’s newly Trump-appointed solicitor general, D. John Sauer, was submitted to Roberts because he is the circuit justice for the Fourth Circuit. We should expect the chief justice to refer the matter to the full Supreme Court, as is customary in consequential cases.
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