'The White House wants this fight': Morning Joe panelists warn 'crisis close at hand'

The White House is defying a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court ordering the return of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, and a pair of panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" warned they deliberately setting up a constitutional crisis.

A federal judge overseeing the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia has ordered the Justice Department to provide "daily updates" on the government's efforts to bring him back, saying the high court was clear in its directive to facilitate his return, but U.S. District judge Paula Xinis said "nothing has been done" to comply with those orders.

"The White House deliberately chose who they thought were, quote, unsavory characters that there wouldn't be mass unrest, mass uprising to protest and try to defend them," said co-host Jonathan Lemire, "and we should note, president Trump, we heard them on Friday saying, well, we'll we'll agree with we'll defer to the Supreme Court. Well, everything administration has done since then saying no, basically saying, well, that's not our problem anymore. These people, including Mr. Garcia, are in the custody of El Salvador. We should note the president actually landed last night at Joint Base Andrews, no sign of that man joining him."

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"This seems to be the point, right?" Lemire added. "You and I have talked about this a lot, and you've been on this early that the White House wants this fight, they want the confrontation with the courts. They're having one right now with the Supreme Court. It seems like that they're not backing down."

The administration's position essentially asserts that they can send anyone living in the U.S. can be sent to an overseas prison and left there, said national affairs analyst John Heilemann.

"This is not just about immigrants who are in this country illegally, this is not just about this case," Heilemann said. "This is not just about this El Salvador. The specifics of this case, as justice [Sonia] Sotomayor noted last week, the Trump administration's claim, legally, is that they can take anyone in the United States and disappear them to a foreign country, and that even if they acknowledge that that was an error of any kind, that they are powerless to bring that person back to the country. That's not jus. about Mr. Garcia. it's not just about illegal illegal immigrants. It's not about criminal illegal immigrants, it's about everybody in the United States. Anybody is what their legal claim is, justice Sotomayor, as I said, made this very clear last week."

"That's the principle and the legal precedent that's at stake here, and it is setting up, if there's anything, we may or may not be in a constitutional crisis already," Heilemann added. "But if the administration continues to hew to that line, we will be in an unequivocal constitutional crisis, and I think that day is very, very close at hand."

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