Trump Gives Supreme Court Middle Finger on Mistakenly Deported Man

Donald Trump’s administration has a new excuse for violating an order from the Supreme Court to return a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

In a seven-page filing Sunday, lawyers for the Department of Justice argued that the federal courts did not have the authority to order the executive branch to “conduct foreign relations” with another country, by facilitating the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father in Maryland who was deported to El Salvador despite having received a protective order prohibiting his removal there.

The lawyers argued that the department could not be compelled to actually “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia because “reading ‘facilitate’ as requiring something more than domestic measures would not only flout the Supreme Court’s order but also violate the separation of powers. The federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations.”

Instead, the Justice Department was choosing to understand “facilitate” as “taking all available steps to remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here.”

The government argued that the court could not compel it to make demands of El Salvador’s government, dispatch U.S. personnel, or send aircraft into foreign airspace.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered the government to report “what it can” about its ongoing efforts to return Abrego Garcia, and ordered the government to provide daily updates about its progress. In a separate filing, the government confirmed that Abrego Garcia was “alive and secure,” but in its filing Sunday, it argued it could not be compelled to report information on the case.

The government claimed Xinis’s request was “particularly inappropriate given that such discovery could interfere with ongoing diplomatic discussions—particularly in the context of President [Nayib] Bukele’s ongoing trip to the United States.”

Bukele, who struck a $6 million deal with Trump to house alleged gang members the U.S. government wishes to deport, arrived in the U.S. Sunday, according to the filing.

Last week, the DOJ presented another flimsy argument for not returning Abrego Garcia, ominously claiming that the government of El Salvador might have its own reasons for keeping him.

Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil will not be returning home to his nine-months’ pregnant wife.

Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans ruled Friday that Khalil, a legal permanent U.S. resident, can be deported out of the country. The 30-year-old—who has not been charged with a crime—can appeal the decision.

Khalil was detained in March, when several agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and took him into custody at his Columbia University–owned apartment. At the time, ICE claimed that they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. But when notified that Khalil was in the U.S. as a permanent resident with a green card, the agency told Khalil’s attorney that they would be revoking that instead.

He was initially held in detention at a New Jersey facility, before he was suddenly transferred to a remote ICE center in Louisiana, where the judge made her decision.

Comans’s decision sets up a confusing battle for Khalil. Last month, a judge in New Jersey offered a contrary ruling, temporarily barring Khalil’s deportation and ordering the case to be transferred back to the Garden State.

Khalil was targeted by the State Department for his participation in a pro-Palestinian demonstration that took place at the Ivy League university. The Trump administration claimed that Khalil’s participation in the protest made him a Hamas supporter, but the Syrian-born Palestinian refugee has counterargued that his arrest was a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech as he “advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”​​

In a letter penned from his detention facility last month, Khalil said that the threat of his removal from the country was part of a “broader strategy to suppress dissent.”

Under pressure to provide evidence supporting Khalil’s deportation, State Secretary Marco Rubio wrote in a memo earlier this week that although the immigrant’s actions were “otherwise lawful,” permitting his continued residency would undermine U.S. foreign policy to “combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States.”

“I have determined that the activities and presence of these aliens in the United States would have potential serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest,” Rubio wrote, further arguing that Khalil’s actions had contributed to a “hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”

Comans said Friday that the two-page memo had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.”

This story has been updated.

Thanks to a technical glitch, Donald Trump’s tariffs haven’t even been collected at U.S. ports.

On Friday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that an entry code in the U.S. system for American ships to use to have their freight exempted from tariffs isn’t working, and “the issue is being reviewed.” As a result, no tariffs are being collected by the U.S. government for the time being.

U.S. shippers told the news outlet that they have not been charged higher tariff rates on their containers as recently as Thursday, despite Trump’s claims that tariffs are in effect and are being collected. This latest snafu is on top of the fact that many companies and industry groups are still unsure of when tariffs will be collected, especially since Trump keeps changing the rates erratically in social media posts and executive orders, and making new threats almost daily.

“There has been some confusion on what President Trump has said in social media posts on when the tariff starts and what is written in the executive order,” Jarred Varanelli, vice president of U.S. sales at logistics firm Savino Del Bene, told CNBC. “Social media posts are not law on the pause and increase in tariffs. With the constant changes to the regulations, all customs brokers in our industry have a difficult task ahead of them.”

If there were doubts about the tariffs being a wise policy, those have increased several times over the fact that U.S. authorities can’t even implement them.

“Whether you agree or disagree with the policy, you have to ask, do we have the ability to do it this rapidly?” Dewardric McNeal, managing director and senior policy analyst at consulting firm Longview Global, said to CNBC. “This glitch may be an indication we need more time. It seems odd this is the time it happens. This adds policy chaos for the implementer.”

For now, CBP is telling shippers to pay duties and tariffs within 10 days of their cargo’s release, in which time it expects the glitch to be resolved. But the whole mess is just further evidence of a complete lack of strategy, planning, or direction with Trump’s tariffs. It doesn’t inspire confidence from the markets, hedge funds, manufacturing workers, or anyone outside of MAGAworld.

While President Donald Trump threw the economy into mayhem this week with his tumultuous back-and-forth tariff scheme, plenty of chaos ensued in other realms.

Here are five news stories you may have missed amid the tariff fiasco:

1. The total number of international students who have had their visas revoked has reached 600 since Trump took office, according to new data released by Inside Higher Ed. That’s more than double the estimate provided by Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month. Some students lost their visas for their connections to pro-Palestinian activism, while others had theirs revoked for minor crimes, like Felipe Zapata Velázquez, a University of Florida student from Colombia who was deported after being stopped by immigration agents at a traffic stop.

2. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration fired hundreds of workers—again. Hundreds of probationary NOAA employees were laid off in February, then reinstated following a court order. On Thursday, the probationary employees received an email informing them of their re-termination. Their firing is to be part of a larger attack on climate and weather research from the Trump administration, as it moves forward with plans to gut NOAA’s budget entirely, CNN reported Friday.

3. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered Trump to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to his birth country of El Salvador last month due to an “administrative error.” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis previously ordered the White House to “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States by April 7, but Chief Justice Roberts paused Xinis’s order.

While the high court ruled the Trump administration had “no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison,” it did not require Abrego Garcia’s return, nor did it provide a deadline for the lower court’s order.

4. Measles cases reached new heights. As of Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded more than 700 cases across 25 states, marking the third-largest measles outbreak of the twenty-first century. Nearly three-quarters of the country’s cases have been recorded in Texas, which has seen 541 cases alone, the majority of which were among unvaccinated people.

After the death of an 8-year-old girl, the second measles death of an unvaccinated Texas minor, longtime vaccine skeptic and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. finally admitted the measles vaccine is necessary to stop the spread.

5. Israeli Defense Forces murdered an American teenager in the West Bank. The family of 14-year-old Amir Rabee was outraged to learn of the death of their son, who was killed after Israeli soldiers opened fire at three people “who were endangering drivers by hurling rocks at a highway in the village of Turmus Ayya,” NPR reported. Rabee’s family wants answers.

The White House is trying to use semantics to dodge the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that it has to help return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States from El Salvador.

At a press conference Friday, Newsmax’s Mike Carter asked press secretary Karoline Leavitt about Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s coming visit to the White House on Monday and whether Trump wanted Bukele to bring Abrego Garcia with him. Leavitt’s response was not encouraging.

“The Supreme Court made their ruling last night very clear that it’s the administration’s responsibility to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return,” Leavitt replied.

It’s true that the high court ruled the Trump administration must abide by a lower court ruling to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia. But focusing on this language ignores the bigger point that both courts ruled against the administration.

The government was barred from returning Abrego Garcia to his native El Salvador due to his life being in danger from gangs, before ICE chose to deport him anyway. Administration officials continue to insist that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 gang member but failed to provide any evidence to that effect, as earlier court rulings had found. Abrego Garcia does not have a criminal record and is married to a U.S. citizen and the father of a child with autism.

But none of this matters to the Trump administration, which refuses to acknowledge that the legal system can do anything about its mass deportation efforts. They continue to drag their feet even in the face of the country’s highest court, controlled by conservatives that Trump himself appointed. Can anything compel this White House to respect and follow the law?