WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – Two immigration cases have landed at the Supreme Court. They involve the Trump administration’s deportation flights to El Salvador.
For now, the Supreme Court says the Trump administration can keep Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a notorious prison in El Salvador.
He was one of the Venezuelans deported to that prison last month even though his attorney says he had a permit to legally work in the U.S.
The Trump administration says Abrego Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error…”
“He wasn’t a member of Tren de Aragua. He was a member of MS-13. Which is just as bad. So, they misidentified him. But it sounds to me like he was a member of MS-13,” said President Donald Trump.
The lower court judge called that allegation “vague” and “uncorroborated.”
Virginia Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, says Americans support border security.
“But they don’t want their friends and neighbors who are here legally swept up and then say oops or sorry he’s down in a deadly prison in El Salvador,” said Warner.
In a separate lawsuit the Supreme Court overturned a judge’s order that stopped the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport people.
“This was a smackdown to a rogue left wing, low-level, district court judge,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court wrote that deportees should sue in Texas where they were held, not Washington, D.C.
All nine justices agreed that anyone about to be deported is “entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal”
“They’re not giving people a chance to show that they’re not even members of the gang,” said Lee Gelernt of the ACLU.
The ACLU has argued the deportees on these flights didn’t have that opportunity.
