In a major win for the Trump Administration and a blow to judicial overreach, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday indefinitely blocked a federal judge’s outrageous order that would have forced the U.S. government to bring back an alleged MS-13 gang member from a maximum-security prison in El Salvador—by midnight.
That’s right. Judge Paula Xinis, a Biden-appointed activist judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, had ordered the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an accused member of one of the most violent criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere, after he was deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison—a facility that makes Rikers look like a wellness retreat.
The judge’s order demanded that the U.S. retrieve Abrego Garcia within days and return him to U.S. soil, where he would presumably be given the full protection of our legal system—and possibly walk free on some technicality. President Trump, rightly outraged by the ruling, filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court earlier Monday to halt the madness.
Chief Justice Roberts didn’t hesitate. He granted an emergency stay, blocking Judge Xinis’ order indefinitely and giving Abrego Garcia’s legal team until April 8 to respond. In the meantime, the Biden bench brigade just got a lesson in the limits of judicial power.
Solicitor General John Sauer summed it up perfectly in his filing: “The Constitution vests the President with control over foreign negotiations… not so that the President’s central Article II prerogatives can give way to district-court diplomacy.” Translation? Federal judges don’t get to run the State Department. They don’t negotiate with foreign governments. And they certainly don’t get to override the Commander-in-Chief on immigration and deportation.
Sauer also made it clear that the U.S. cannot compel a sovereign nation like El Salvador to hand back a violent gang member just because a federal judge feels like playing international lawyer for a day. “Under that logic,” Sauer warned, “district courts would effectively have extraterritorial jurisdiction over the United States’ diplomatic relations with the whole world.”
Let’s call this what it is: a judge trying to force the U.S. government to undo the deportation of a dangerous criminal to a foreign prison. Thank God President Trump stepped in—and thank God Chief Justice Roberts had the sense to hit the brakes. For once, common sense prevails.
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