A Conservative Reagan-Appointed Judge Slams Trump’s “Shocking” Behavior in Kilmar Abrego Garcia Case

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who the Trump administration mistakenly deported to an El Salvadoran gulag last month, met with his state’s Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen on Thursday. Van Hollen told The New York Times he’d traveled to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) to “see if Kilmar Abrego Garcia is doing OK” because he had been “totally beyond reach” since he was deported in what the administration has admitted was an error.

The visit was nearly scuttled Thursday when Van Hollen said he was turned away by guards from CECOT, which has recently become a frighteningly popular travel destination for Republican lawmakers seeking photo ops. But a photo shared by Van Hollen on X Thursday night showed Abrego Garcia in a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl hat and button-down shirt, speaking with Van Hollen at a hotel in San Salvador.

“I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance,” Van Hollen wrote. “I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.”

Earlier this month, in a 9-0 decision, the US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release. The White House has since sought to twist that decision, arguing weakly that their only obligation is to “provide a plane” if El Salvador chooses to release Abrego Garcia—something President Nayib Bukele has claimed just as weakly he doesn’t have the power to do.

The Supreme Court left it to US District Judge Paula Xinis to clarify her earlier directive ordering the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate” Kilmar Garcia’s return to the U.S. But the Trump administration has since argued that the court does not have the power to issue such an order and sought out an appeals court to block Xinis’s ruling.

On Thursday, that federal appeals panel issued a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration’s arguments and denied its motion to block the lower court’s order. In an opinion written by conservative judge and Ronald Reagan appointee Harvie Wilkinson III, the court noted bluntly that this case “is not hard at all.”

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” Wilkinson wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

Whether Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, as the administration has tried to claim with limited evidence, is immaterial, the opinion reads. “He is still entitled to due process,” Wilkinson wrote. “If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail” in lifting an earlier court ruling that shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation.

The appeals panel even offered up a grammar lesson to those in the White House quibbling over the meaning of “facilitate” in the Supreme Court’s order. “Facilitate is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear,” the opinion reads.

Beyond what the case means for Abrego Garcia—and the hundreds of others like him who were sent to CECOT—the appeals court issued a stark warning about the existential nature of the case and what its outcome portends for the rule of law in the United States. “Now, the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both,” the opinion reads. “This is a losing proposition all around.”