The New Yorker:

By defying the Justices’ ruling on a man mistakenly sent to El Salvador, the Administration has shown that it is not owed the deference typically shown to the executive branch.

By Ruth Marcus

The Trump Administration is arguing that the Supreme Court did not mean what nine Justices unanimously ruled in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man illegally sent to a Salvadoran prison because of what the Administration contends was an “administrative error.” On Thursday, the Court ordered the government to “ ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.” The government, in an insolent filing on Sunday evening, rewrote that instruction. “Facilitate” means only “taking all available steps to remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here,” it argued. “Indeed, no other reading of ‘facilitate’ is tenable—or constitutional—here.”

Forget any effort to repair the Administration’s admitted mistake by seeking Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran authorities—authorities who, according to news reports, are being paid to jail him and others shipped there by the United States. That, the government argued, would intrude on the President’s sole power to conduct foreign relations. So the government’s responsibility here is to, what, maybe issue Abrego Garcia a Global Entry card to cut the immigration line if he somehow turns up at a U.S. airport? This defiant position cannot stand—not if the rule of law is to survive.

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