"Detained Without Evidence": Maryland Father Remains in El Salvador Prison After SCOTUS Ruling

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The Supreme Court has paused a lower court order that instructed the Trump administration to immediately bring back a U.S. legal resident who was "mistakenly" sent to El Salvador, giving the court more time to deliberate on the case. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was expelled from the U.S. on March 15 despite holding protected status, will continue to languish under dangerous conditions in a Salvadoran maximum-security prison. The Trump administration claims it's powerless to bring him back to his family in Maryland. "They have dug in their heels at every step of the way," says Abrego Garcia's lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, about the government's defense. "It's ridiculous that this case is at the Supreme Court at all."

Behind Abrego Garcia's ICE arrest and removal is Trump's invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority last deployed during World War II. In a separate ruling, the Supreme Court has approved of the Trump administration's removals of Venezuelan immigrants, but said that those targeted must be given an opportunity to challenge their removal. So far, immigrants expelled to El Salvador have been largely denied their legal rights and detained without clear evidence. They are then incarcerated in the country's "mega-prisons," where rights abuses have flourished under El Salvador's "state of exception." "These conditions constitute, under international law, forced disappearances," says Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal, a human rights organization in Central America.

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