Prison guards serarch inmates during a media tour at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, in Tecoluca, El Salvador April 4, 2025. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas
The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board laid into the Trump administration again Monday night as it actively fights against efforts to return a wrongfully deported man from a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison to the United States.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland was mistakenly sent to a mega-prison last month, and the Trump administration acknowledged his deportation was due to an "administrative error."
Garcia was deported on March 15, even though an immigration judge in 2019 barred his removal due to risks of persecution and torture by gangs. But the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 to mass deport alleged gang members, including Garcia, even though no evidence has emerged tying him to criminal activities.
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The administration has said Garcia is no longer under the United States' jurisdiction since he is detained by Salvadoran authorities.
And the Journal editors weren't having it, writing that the Trump Administration is fighting to "keep a man falsely expelled in a Salvadoran hellhole."
"The Trump Administration’s never-back-down style is becoming a governance problem with overtones of cruelty," the editorial said.
The administration said in its filing that the Constitution "charges the President, not federal district courts, with the conduct of foreign diplomacy and protecting the Nation against foreign terrorists." Solicitor General John Sauer, meanwhile, said the judge's ruling dictated to the U.S. “that it must not only negotiate with a foreign country to return an enemy alien on foreign soil, but also succeed by 11:59 p.m. tonight." That could, said Sauer, set a terrible precedent of “district court diplomacy.”
"Not quite," the Journal retorted, pointing to another judge's rationale for denying the Trump administration's demand for a pause, which noted the facts of the case "present the potential for a disturbing loophole: namely that the government could whisk individuals to foreign prisons in violation of court orders and then contend, invoking its Article II powers, that it is no longer their custodian, and there is nothing that can be done.”
That, the judge said, is a path to “perfect lawlessness.”
"The Trump Administration hates to admit an error, but its obstinance here serves no purpose. Mistakes happen. Why not ask the Salvadoran government to send Mr. Abrego Garcia back to unite with his family?" the Journal concluded.