What happened
A federal appeals court yesterday upheld U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis' efforts to compel the Trump administration to facilitate the return of wrongfully deported migrant Kilmar Ábrigo García, criticizing the administration's conduct in the case as "shocking." Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said last night he had met with Ábrego García in El Salvador after two days of thwarted efforts.
Who said what
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th District Court of Appeals in Virginia, declined to "micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court's recent decision" that the Trump administration actively work to extricate Ábrego García from El Salvador's infamous CECOT prison.
The government's assertion of "a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process" and then claim "there is nothing that can be done" about it "should be shocking not only to judges" but all Americans with an "intuitive sense of liberty," said Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee. "If the government is confident" in its unsubstantiated claim that "Ábrego García is a terrorist and a member of MS-13," it "should be assured that position will prevail" in a deportation hearing, he said. "Regardless, he is still entitled to due process."
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Wilkinson is "one of the nation's most prominent conservative appellate judges," Politico said, and his opinion is the "latest — and most scorching — judicial rebuke" of Trump's "moves to sidestep court orders." Legal experts said his "unusually strong language for a simple procedural decision was aimed at a broader public audience," Reuters said.
What next?
"I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance," Van Hollen said on X, with a photo of the two talking in a San Salvador hotel. "I look forward to providing a full update upon my return." El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, echoing the Trump administration, said now that Ábrego García has "been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador's custody."
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