The Trump administration believes it can send anyone it wants, without due process or future legal recourse, to rot in a foreign prison.

It has argued as much in court. Lawyers for the Justice Department have asserted the president’s supposedly “inherent” authority to remove foreign nationals from the United States, and the White House is openly defying a court order to facilitate the return of an immigrant living in Maryland and sent, accidentally, to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

The immigrant in question, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, is Salvadoran, has lived in the United States since 2011 and was granted protected status by an immigration judge in 2019. He was detained last month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, accused of membership in MS-13 — a Salvadoran gang — and in short order was removed to El Salvador without so much as a hearing.

His family sued the government and, soon after, a Federal District Court judge ordered the administration to return Abrego Garcia to American shores. The Supreme Court upheld that decision in a unanimous ruling that also affirmed the Constitution’s clear guarantees of due process of law.

But the Trump administration won’t budge. Justice Department lawyers deny that the government has any responsibility to get Abrego Garcia home and insist that his removal wasn’t a mistake, although they won’t share the information that might support this claim on the grounds that it is sensitive and thus classified.

The White House has also taken this position outside of the courtroom. On Monday, during a state visit by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele — the administration’s enthusiastic partner in the rendition of immigrants abroad — Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that “no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States,” a tacit assertion that President Trump can ignore court orders requiring Abrego Garcia’s release. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that it was “not up to us” whether Abrego Garcia was returned, and Bukele himself said that “I’m not going to do it,” after incredulously asking how he was supposed to “smuggle” a “terrorist” back into the United States. For his part, Trump rejected calls to bring Abrego Garcia home and raised the possibility of sending “homegrown criminals” to El Salvador, even urging Bukele to construct new prisons for the people Trump hopes to exile there.

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