The Trump administration has claimed it is not legally obligated to secure the return of a Maryland man who was sent in error to a prison in El Salvador, despite the US supreme court ruling that the administration should “facilitate” bringing him back.
As Trump welcomed El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, to the White House on Monday, lawyers for the justice department argued in court filings on Sunday that asking El Salvador to return Kilmar Abrego García from a notorious mega-prison should be considered “foreign relations”, and was therefore outside the scope of the courts.
Related: Trump lawyers confirm wrongly deported Maryland man in El Salvador prison
The filing said “the federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” adding: “That is the ‘exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations”.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration acknowledged that Abrego García, an immigrant from El Salvador who was living in Maryland with protected status, was deported to a prison in El Salvador on 15 March as a result of an “administrative error”. In 2019 an immigration judge had prohibited the federal government from deporting him.
When he was deported anyway, swept up in Donald Trump’s effort to send hundreds of supposed gang members to El Salvador without due process, Abrego-García’s wife and relatives filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
On 4 April a district judge, Paula Xinis, directed the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” his return. The supreme court upheld the directive on Thursday, and also instructed Xinis to clarify the order “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”.
Related: Supreme court orders US to help return man wrongly deported to El Salvador
On Friday, Xinis said in a hearing that it was “extremely troubling” that the administration had failed to comply with a court order to provide details about Abrego García’s whereabouts and status. She ordered that it provide daily updates on efforts to facilitate his return.
On Saturday, the Trump administration confirmed Abrego García was alive and confined in El Salvador’s mega-prison, CECOT.
Then, on Sunday, the justice department said it interpreted the court’s order to “facilitate” Albrego Garcia’s return as only requiring them to “remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here”.
It added that “no other reading of ‘facilitate’ is tenable – or constitutional – here.”
In a separate court filing on Sunday, an official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said that the 2019 order preventing Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was no longer valid, as a result of the administration’s allegation that he was a member of the MS-13 gang, “which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization”, the court filing states.