JURISPRUDENCE
The Crisis Over Trump’s Salvadoran Gulag Has Reached a Terrifying Breaking Point

BY MARK JOSEPH STERN
APRIL 14, 2025 1:12 PM


Who is the decider here? Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Win McNamee/Getty Images, Ezequiel Becerra/AFP via Getty Images, and Ann Moneymaker/Getty Images.

The Trump administration escalated its defiance of federal court orders over the weekend, adamantly refusing to reverse its illegal deportation of a Maryland father, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to an El Salvador prison. Across multiple filings, Justice Department lawyers flouted a judge’s directive to explain how the government intended to bring back Abrego Garcia—and denied that it had a duty to return him to the United States at all. Instead, the administration disclaimed any real responsibility to help the man, impudently misconstruing a Supreme Court decision compelling it to do just that. The government capped off this aggressive disobedience by submitting what appears to be a brazen lie to the court, claiming—implausibly and without evidence—that it had retroactively made Abrego Garcia’s deportation lawful. And it refused to turn over information that could allegedly bolster its dubious allegations on the grounds that it is all classified.

On Monday morning, top officials backed up the Justice Department’s startling claims during a White House visit by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that he could disregard court orders directing the return of Abrego Garcia. Attorney General Pam Bondi said it was “not up to us” whether he is brought home. Bukele then announced that he would not send Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., saying: “Of course I’m not going to do it.”

This sneering resistance to the judiciary’s intervention was both entirely predictable and profoundly ominous. From the start, the U.S. government’s behavior in this case has been a conscience-shocking breach of both laws and norms that once stood as a firewall to safeguard all of our civil liberties. And it is now spiraling out of control. In a matter of days, Justice Department lawyers and administration officials have burned through basic legal duties in defense of a hideously unlawful scheme that seeks to permanently render innocent people to a black site. They have torched their credibility by violating the most fundamental obligations of candor to a court—not hesitantly, but proudly so, with undisguised disdain toward judges attempting to salvage whatever remains of the rule of law.

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