Supreme Court Orders U.S. to “Facilitate” Return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador

AMY GOODMAN: In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, after the Maryland resident, husband and father of three, with no criminal record, was denied due process rights and sent to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. But the court remained vague on how exactly this would happen, and the Trump administration has claimed it has no way of ensuring his safe return.

This comes as a federal immigration judge in Louisiana is set to rule today on whether the Trump administration has grounds to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States and Columbia University graduate student who played a key role in organizing campus protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza. Ahead of today’s ruling, Secretary of State Marco Rubio filed a short memo that concedes Khalil has no criminal history, and argues he should be deported as part of U.S. efforts to combat antisemitism.

For more, we’re joined in New York by Ramzi Kassem, part of Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team, professor of law at the City University of New York, or CUNY, where he founded and co-directs CLEAR, a legal clinic. The acronym stands for Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility.

Ramzi, welcome back to Democracy Now! Let’s first look at this unanimous Supreme Court ruling that Kilmar must be returned from El Salvador — at least the U.S. must “facilitate” this. What exactly does this mean?

RAMZI KASSEM: Good morning, Amy. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, the decision in Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case is a bittersweet win for him and his family, of course. You know, he’s been taken away from them in such an unjust and cruel fashion and taken to one of the most notorious facilities in El Salvador. The decision confirms that the government needs to facilitate, but asks the lower court to clarify what it meant when it said that the government should — the U.S. government should effectuate. And that’s just a reference to the limits of the U.S. government’s power to control the actions of a foreign sovereign here, El Salvador.

And so, it may take some time. The bottom line is that it may take some time, because, of course, the U.S. government cannot order another government to do anything, now that it has put Mr. Abrego Garcia in this position. But it is still a step in the right direction and hopefully will lead to his return home to his family, or at least, unfortunately, to immigration detention in the United States while the government works out its theory for why he should be removed even though he received legal protection in the past.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about your own client? Can you talk about Mahmoud Khalil, a Louisiana judge ruling today exactly on what? Could the judge rule that Mahmoud could be freed?

RAMZI KASSEM: Well, Amy, you know, the government’s strategy in Mr. Khalil’s case, and, actually, across the board in these cases where the government has outrageously detained student activists in the United States, including permanent residents like Mr. Khalil, simply for speaking up in defense of Palestinian rights and lives — their strategy, in many of these cases, has been to speed up and accelerate the removal cases, the administrative immigration cases, because that is a court that they fully control — every immigration judge serves at the pleasure of the president — and simultaneously to slow down the federal habeas corpus cases that the prisoners themselves, men like Mr. Khalil and Ms. Ozturk, have brought in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of their detention, to tie up those federal cases and jurisdictional issues.

And so, what’s happening in Louisiana in immigration court is symptomatic of that strategy. Immigration cases very rarely, in my experience, move this quickly. I’ve never seen one move this quickly through the system. So, that’s already not a good sign. That’s a sign that there may be some political interference.

Now, the immigration judge today is supposed to rule on removability, whether or not Mr. Khalil is deportable. Of course, theoretically, if she finds that he is not deportable under the government’s charges, then she should set him free. But I think we should be focused on the other alternative, which is that the immigration judge will find him removable, that she will agree with, potentially, the government’s argument that Marco Rubio’s two-page memo is all that she needs to find him removable and that she cannot interrogate the secretary of state’s finding in that two-page memo that Mr. Khalil and another individual whose name is redacted, that their very presence or activities or their speech constitutes such a problem for U.S. foreign policy, somehow, that they have to be deported. Now, that is the government’s position, that all it needs is that two-pager to put someone like Mr. Khalil, who’s a permanent resident with a U.S. citizen wife, who’s expecting their first child this month, behind bars and to remove them from the country that they call home. And if the immigration judge agrees with that position, that would be another outrage in a long series of outrages in Mr. Khalil’s case as he continues to fight for his freedom in federal court.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Ramzi Kassem, part of the legal team representing Mahmoud Khalil, professor law at the City University of New York, known as CUNY. He co-directs CLEAR, a legal clinic, Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility.