Appeals court won’t lift order requiring Trump to facilitate return of asylum seeker deported to El Salvador
CNN
A divided federal appeals court on Monday rejected a request from the Trump administration to put on hold a judge’s order requiring the government to “facilitate” the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan refugee who was deported earlier this year to El Salvador.
A divided federal appeals court on Monday rejected a request from the Trump administration to put on hold a judge’s order requiring the government to “facilitate” the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan refugee who was deported earlier this year to El Salvador. The 2-1 ruling from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals tees up a likely showdown at the Supreme Court over the order issued in April by US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, who said the administration had violated a court settlement protecting some young migrants with pending asylum claims when it deported the man, referred to only as “Cristian” in court filings, and directed it to work with Salvadorean officials to bring him back to the US. The high court had endorsed a similar, yet less specific, order from a different federal judge earlier this year in a separate case of a man unlawfully deported to the Central American country. Appeals court Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, and Judge Roger Gregory, who was nominated to the court by former President Bill Clinton, voted in favor of keeping Gallagher’s order intact. Judge Julius Richardson, who was appointed to the 4th Circuit by President Donald Trump, dissented. In a scathing solo concurrence, Gregory was critical of the administration’s argument that the lower-court order should be put on hold because the government had made an “indicative decision” that Cristian’s asylum application would be denied if he returned to the US based on its claim that he’s a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. That argument similarly had no sway when the administration asked Gallagher to undo her order. “As is becoming far too common, we are confronted again with the efforts of the Executive Branch to set aside the rule of law in pursuit of its goals,” Gregory wrote. “It is the duty of courts to stand as a bulwark against the political tides that seek to override constitutional protections and fundamental principles of law, even in the name of noble ends like public safety.”
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