Just when the Trump administration might’ve thought it was out of having to rectify its illegal removals of immigrants, yet another court pulled it back into compliance.
It’s the latest instance of a court ordering a legal remedy for something that should never have happened in the first place but, in fact, has happened several times so far in President Donald Trump’s second term. It follows the government’s reluctant return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom U.S. officials illegally sent to a Salvadoran prison in March and only got him back earlier this month.
In this latest case in a genre that shouldn’t exist, a “confluence of administrative errors” is what the government blamed for the illegal removal of Jordin Alexander Melgar-Salmeron to El Salvador on May 7. The problem is that the government had told the court that it “would forebear removal until May 8.” That led a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Tuesday to order the government to facilitate Melgar-Salmeron’s return “as soon as possible.”
The panel cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in Abrego’s case, in which the justices approved a judge’s facilitation order “to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” That high court order came in April and was followed by defiance and obfuscation from the administration, until officials finally got Abrego back (to face criminal charges they had waiting for him). The government had similarly said that Abrego’s illegal removal was the result of an “administrative error.”
How drawn out this latest case gets remains to be seen. The panel gave the government a week to update the court with Melgar-Salmeron’s (1) current physical location and custodial status, and (2) what steps the government will take, and when, to facilitate his U.S. return. His lawyers can respond to the government’s filing within three days of its submission, after which we should have a better idea of where this one is headed. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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