(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Thursday required President Donald Trump’s administration to “facilitate” the return of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador but stopped short of requiring the government to return him to the United States.

The high court said that the administration must try to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was deported on March 15. It said part of the lower court’s order requiring the government to “effectuate” his return was unclear and needed further review.

The court did not give the administration a deadline for when Abrego Garcia should be returned. The opinion was unsigned and no dissents were noted.

“Tonight, the rule of law prevailed. The Supreme Court upheld the District Judge’s order that the government has to bring Kilmar home,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys. “Now they need to stop wasting time and get moving.”

But the Trump administration also framed the decision as a win for its position.

“As the Supreme Court correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the president to conduct foreign affairs,” a Department of Justice spokesperson said. “By directly noting the deference owed to the executive branch, this ruling once again illustrates that activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy.”

The high court’s unsigned and brief decision left US District Judge Paula Xinis’ order in place but drew a distinction between “facilitating” Abrego Garcia’s return and “effectuating” it. The lower court properly required the government to “facilitate” his return, the justices made clear.

“The intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’ in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority,” the court wrote Thursday. Therefore, the court said, Xinis should “clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” That appeared to be a nod to the Trump administration’s arguments in the case.

In written briefs, the Trump administration had warned that requiring it to “effectuate” the return of Abrego Garcia would violate separation of powers principles. And it defined “facilitate” narrowly in those briefs – essentially, removing any barriers to his return.

Ultimately, the majority left it to the lower court to sort out how to strike the balance.

“Although the ruling makes clear that the district court can order the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, it is maddeningly vague about exactly how it’s supposed to do so,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

“For instance, if the judge asks the government about the specific arrangements it’s made with the Salvadoran government and the government invokes the state secrets privilege, what happens then?” Vladeck added. “It is, yet again, punting in a context in which the government can take advantage of the punt – a loss for Trump on the big question, but a loss for Abrego García on what matters most.”

“The Supreme Court’s opinion today gives the administration cover to ‘try’ to bring him home but does not require the federal government – the executive branch – to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia home,” Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, told CNN. “It’s a decision that doesn’t protect Mr. Abrego Garcia to the fullest extent that the law should.”

Xinis on Thursday night ordered the Trump administration to “take all available steps to facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, hours after the Supreme Court’s order.

The lower court judge also ordered lawyers for the Justice Department to provide her with a sworn statement by 9:30 a.m. ET Friday from an individual “with personal knowledge” of the steps the government has or is planning to take to secure Abrego Garcia’s return. Xinis scheduled a hearing over the issue for Friday afternoon.

Liberals wanted Trump appeal denied in full

The court’s three liberals didn’t dissent from the decision but wrote separately to argue that the Trump administration’s emergency appeal should have been denied in full.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed the administration to existing executive branch policy that the federal government should “facilitate [an] alien’s return to the United States if … the alien’s presence is necessary for continued administrative removal proceedings.”

Sotomayor’s statement criticized the Trump administration for dismissing the mistaken removal as an “oversight,” rather than “hastening to correct its egregious error.”

“The Government now requests an order from this Court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law,” she and the other liberals said. “The only argument the Government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong.”

Sotomayor said that when the proceedings go back to the lower court, the judge should “continue to ensure that the Government lives up to its obligations to follow the law.” Among those obligations, she said, are several due process protections in immigration statute, as well as the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture.

Ties to MS-13?

Abrego Garcia was arrested by Department of Homeland Security officers on March 12 and was placed on one of three planes bound for El Salvador days later. But even the Trump administration had acknowledged that an immigration judge had, years earlier, barred his deportation to El Salvador over concerns about his safety in his native country.

After his family sued, Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia by 11:59 p.m. on Monday. But Trump officials said it could not negotiate with El Salvador that quickly and it argued that federal courts could neither compel the president’s foreign policy nor review decisions by the attorney general to execute removal orders.

But the Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously sided with Abrego Garcia. Two of three judges concluded that federal law only strips courts of jurisdiction to review lawful decisions by the attorney general. Those judges also concluded that Abrego Garcia remained a detainee of the United States – just one who was being temporarily housed in El Salvador. In other words, the court said, the Trump administration had the power to return him on its own.

Abrego Garcia entered the country illegally sometime around 2011, but an immigration judge in 2019 – after reviewing evidence – withheld his removal. That meant that Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador. A gang in his native country, the immigration judge found, had been “targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”

Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the Trump administration’s newly confirmed top appellate attorney, claimed that Abrego Garcia is a “ranking member” of the MS-13 gang. Because the Trump administration designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization, Sauer argued, the withholding from the immigration court was no longer enforceable.

The administration alleges that Abrego Garcia was arrested “in the company of other ranking gang members” and that he was confirmed to be a member of the gang by a “reliable source.”

But Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have stressed that their client has no criminal charges in Maryland, or anywhere else. And they have denied his involvement in MS-13.

The evidence suggests that Abrego Garcia is “a gainfully employed family man who lives a law abiding and productive life,” wrote US Circuit Judge Stephanie Thacker, an Obama nominee. “The government has made no effort to demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is, in fact, a member of any gang,” in the current case.

Abrego Garcia was sent to the notorious prison in El Salvador on March 15. Several of the immigrants loaded onto those planes were deported under Trump’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act – an invocation that has drawn its own flood of legal challenges, including a case that went up to the Supreme Court.

But Abrego Garcia was deported under different authorities.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court delivered Trump a partial win, allowing him to continue to use the controversial Alien Enemies Act but also requiring officials to provide notice to people who could be subject to the act so they may attempt to have a judge review their case. It’s not yet clear how that will work in practice. The Supreme Court did not fill in details about how much notice detainees should be given and how lower courts should handle those proceedings.

The Supreme Court’s ruling also left uncertain the fate of people who had already been deported under the act.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Paula Reid, Priscilla Alvarez and Devan Cole contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.