What the Supreme Court’s ruling on man wrongly deported to El Salvador says about presidential authority and the rule of law

Image April 16, 2025 MuniCourts

by Jean Lantz Reisz, University of Southern California

People hold signs on April 4, 2025, supporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

The Supreme Court on April 10, 2025, unanimously upheld the lower court order directing the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

The Supreme Court also directed the lower court to clarify aspects of the order.

“The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego García’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the Supreme Court order states.

It is undisputed that the Trump administration made a mistake.

The Justice Department admitted to deporting Abrego García to a maximum security prison in El Salvador even though an immigration judge in 2019 ordered that he not be deported. The judge did so under an immigration law called “withholding of removal,” which is a protection, like asylum, for people facing persecution in their home country.

But the Trump administration has said a court cannot order it to fix its mistake and bring Abrego García back to the United States.

According to the Trump administration, such an order would be “constitutionally intolerable.” The government has compared the court order to return Abrego García to an order to “‘effectuate’ the end of the war in Ukraine or return hostages from Gaza.”

Abrego García should not have been deported

Abrego García received this protective legal status six years ago. That’s when he proved to the court he was highly likely to be persecuted by the government or gangs in El Salvador due to a specific reason, as required under immigration law.

Unlike asylum or refugee status, the status known as “withholding of removal” is not a pathway to citizenship. It allows a person to live and work in the U.S. indefinitely and not be deported to their country of nationality if they face persecution there.

The government states it arrested and deported Abrego García on March 15 because he is a gang member. When Abrego García appealed his deportation, the federal district and appellate courts determined that the government provided no credible evidence of gang membership.

That’s important, because the government failed to follow proper procedure to deport Abrego García based on gang membership. When someone is in “withholding of removal” status, the law requires the government to reopen immigration proceedings based on new evidence and seek to formally terminate the legal withholding status.

Abrego García should have been notified of the government’s desire to deport him, and he should have had the opportunity to make his case at a court hearing. His summary deportation to El Salvador likely violated his right to due process under immigration law and the Constitution.

Balance of powers are at stake

The government did not follow the law, but it argues that the court cannot do anything about it.

The crux of the government’s position is that a court does not have the power to order the release of a person in a foreign prison. That would interfere with the separation of powers among the executive and judicial branches. The president has the sole power to conduct foreign relations with El Salvador, and the government has argued that ordering the return of Abrego García interferes with that power.

Prisoners behind bars look toward two men and one woman standing outside a cell. — Prisoners watch as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visits the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 26, 2025. Alex Brandon/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

The court cannot order the Salvadoran government to do anything, but it can order the U.S. government to take steps to return García Abrego if he was unlawfully arrested and deported. That’s because the judiciary has the power to determine whether the president’s actions are lawful.

The district court’s order was based on its determination that the president has likely violated immigration law and the Constitution in arresting and deporting Abrego García. The appellate court agreed.

The Supreme Court has now said the order to facilitate Abrego García’s return is proper. But the high court also said the district court judge should further clarify its order, being mindful of the president’s authority when it comes to conducting foreign relations.

Who is detaining Abrego García?

The Salvadoran government seems to be imprisoning Abrego García at the request of the U.S. government.

Trump administration lawyers have suggested in their briefing to the Supreme Court that there could be reasons under El Salvador law for Abrego García’s imprisonment. The government has not identified any reasons and has not provided any evidence that Abrego García is charged with a crime in El Salvador, or that he is being held under Salvadoran law.

The Department of Homeland Security routinely contracts with local jails and for-profit prison corporations to temporarily house immigrant detainees in the U.S. The government has reportedly agreed to pay El Salvador US$6 million to imprison certain U.S. immigrant detainees for one year. The details of this agreement are not known.

Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, has said that the Salvadoran megaprison is “one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use.”

The district and appellate courts determined in this case that the U.S. is using the Salvadoran prison like any other detention facility. Under those circumstances, the U.S. government, not El Salvador, has ultimate control over Abrego García.

The US Supreme Court building is seen at dusk. — The Supreme Court ruled that the government should facilitate Abrego García’s return. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

As an immigration law scholar, I believe that the government can take steps to return Abrego García.

In fact, other appellate courts have ordered the government to return immigrants who had been removed from the U.S. but later won their appeals of their removal orders. Those people were not in foreign prisons.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has created a formal policy for aiding the return of immigrants who were deported while their appeals were pending and then subsequently won their appeals.

The government has argued that those situations are different. Here, it claims the court cannot demand the return of Abrego García, who is imprisoned in another country. The problem with the government’s argument is that it is the Trump administration that put Abrego García in a foreign prison.

The Trump administration has also argued that Abrego García is not entitled to return to the U.S.. It has argued that even though it was a mistake to deport him to El Salvador under his withholding of removal status, Abrego García could have been removed to another country and has no right to return to the U.S..

This would be true if Abrego García voluntarily left the U.S. or was deported to a country other than El Salvador, but that is not what happened. The government removed Abrego García to El Salvador in violation of U.S. law.

The White House’s position in this matter is troubling because the president is supposed to enforce the law, not circumvent it.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a separate statement published with the order and joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson: “The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.”

What steps the government will take to return Abrego García is unclear. The Supreme Court’s decision leaves open the question of how far the court can go to enforce his return.

Republished with permission under license from The Conversation.

Race

Shortage of Black doctors is rooted in racist history

April 12, 2025 MuniCourts

a $600M gift will help historically Black medical schools address the gap

by Benjamin Chrisinger, Tufts University

A view of Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga. Marcus Ingram/Getty Images

Fueled by the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling that bans affirmative action in higher education, conservative lawmakers across the country have advanced their own state bans on diversity initiatives, especially those that might make students feel shame or guilt for past harms against people of color.

This effort encompasses medical schools.

Despite clear and persistent gaps between white and Black doctors – and recent efforts to reckon with racial disparities within the medical profession – lawmakers have tried to advance policies to prohibit diversity initiatives in medicine.

U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina introduced one such bill to restrict diversity initiatives. “American medical schools are no place for discrimination,” said Murphy, a Republican, in March 2024. “Diversity strengthens medicine, but not if it’s achieved through exclusionary practices … of prejudice and divisive ideology.”

But the gaps in racial representation in medicine go beyond a professional numbers game. Modern research shows that the lack of Black doctors helps explain why about 70% of Black people don’t trust their doctors, and why Black people tend to die younger than their white peers.

The evidence is clear: America needs more Black doctors.

To that end, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg pledged on Aug. 6, 2024, to donate US$600 million to four historically Black medical schools. The gifts to Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Morehouse School of Medicine and Charles Drew University of Medicine & Science are among the largest donations to any historically Black college or university. Xavier University, located in Louisiana, will also receive a $5 million grant to support its new medical school.

“This gift will empower new generations of Black doctors to create a healthier and more equitable future for our country,” Bloomberg said in a statement before the annual convention of the National Medical Association, an organization that advocates for Black physicians.

A limited landscape

According to a 2022 survey of 950,000 doctors by the Association of American Medical Colleges, 63.9% reported their ethnicity as white, and just 5.7% Black or African American. But according to 2023 estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau, Black people make up 13.6% of the population, while white people represent 58.9%.

These modern inequalities in medicine have deep roots. As a community health professor, I am always curious how today’s racial health disparities formed in the first place. One window into this history is through the official physician directories published by the American Medical Association.

Starting in 1906, the AMA has published directories of all qualified physicians in the U.S. These directories were created to be comprehensive records that excluded “quack” physicians and unqualified graduates of fraudulent medical schools.

Each physician’s record included a variety of details, including their place of practice and when and where they completed medical training.

Between 1906 and 1940, the AMA also insisted on publishing the race of Black doctors. Beside each entry appeared the label “col.” for “colored.”

Based on this information, I created a digitized dataset of the 1906 directory and detailed geographic and demographic patterns associated with where Black doctors trained and practiced. Of the 41,828 physicians listed in the 1906 directory, only 746 were Black – or 1.8%.

A Black man wearing a business suit poses for a portrait. — Dr. R.F. Boyd was a professor at Meharry Medical College in 1902. Heritage Art/ Getty Images

Most Black doctors in the South were trained by a handful of Southern medical schools established to educate African Americans. Over half – 57% – of Southern Black physicians attended Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, or Howard University Medical School in Washington, D.C. – schools that are still in existence.

But nearly a third – 29% – of Southern Black physicians attended schools that would be closed a few years after the 1906 directory’s release. In 1910, at the behest of the AMA, educator Abraham Flexner released a report after studying the standards of medical schools in the U.S. and Canada.

The results of the Flexner report was devastating to the number of Black doctors. Citing low admissions standards and poor quality of education, Flexner recommended closing five of the seven historically Black medical schools that trained the vast majority of Black doctors.

By 1912, three Black medical schools were shut down. By 1924, only two remained in operation – Meharry and Howard.

The consequences of this extremely limited educational landscape for aspiring Black physicians are reflected in the data. In most Southern states, the distance between medical school and practice locations was significantly greater, even before the closings, for Black doctors compared with their white counterparts.

The deep roots of inequalities

To help interpret where Black doctors established practices in the South, I also linked directory data to other historical sources, including the U.S. Census.

What I found was that places with larger Black populations were more likely to have a Black doctor, as were places that were closer to a Black medical school.

A white man wearing a mask is placing a white coat on a Black man who is smiling with his arms outstretched. — Medical student John Muthama gets his white coat during a ceremony at the University of Minnesota Medical School in August 2022. Anthony Souffle/Star Tribune via Getty Images

Many contemporary scholars and activists are looking to the past in order to increase the public’s understanding of how race has played a historical role in the health outcomes of Black Americans.

For example, Dr. Uché Blackstock, a Black physician, illustrates many instances of medical racism throughout American history in her most recent book, “Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine,” and shows their lasting impacts on how Black patients are treated and the quality of health care they receive.

She was one of the first, for example, to warn health officials about the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. As she wrote in 2020: Black Americans were more vulnerable during the pandemic “because of several manifestations of structural racism, including lack of access to testing, a higher chronic disease burden and racial bias within health care institutions.”

Without an accounting of how racial disparities in medicine were formed, it’s much more difficult to determine which kinds of progressive measures are needed to provide redress.

Future analyses will help unpack these racial disparities in greater detail. But for now, both academic researchers and the public can use our data to explore the importance of historically Black medical schools and the lives of Black physicians during the Jim Crow era.

It’s my belief that their legacies deserve to be a better-known part of the history of American medicine.