Bulwark Takes - Supreme Court Said Bring Him Back—Trump Still Refusing

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Sarah Longwell and Andrew Egger discuss the Trump administration’s refusal to bring back a wrongly deported Maryland father, despite a unanimous Supreme Court ruling as the White House tests how far it can go to defy the law.

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they admitted, erroneously sent to a very intense prison in El Salvador. And at the end of last week, the Supreme Court said that the White House needed to facilitate this guy's return, right? Because they sent him there wrong. He had protected status here. He is married to an American citizen. He has American children. And more importantly, it was made clear that if he was like he was under threat, like one of the reasons he was given this protected status is because if he was sent back to El Salvador, his life would be in danger. So I've got that part. What I'm unclear on or less clear on is we've all been waiting for the Trump administration to basically say no to the courts, although the Supreme Court is a different animal altogether. So when they ruled

9-0 that they had to facilitate this guy's return, you sort of thought that was the end of it, but apparently not. And Andrew is going to walk us through why and how the White House is planning on navigating this and basically not that interested in getting this guy back, despite what the Supreme Court said. Andrew, go. Yeah, so basically what's happening here is you're having the White House gear up to absolutely sort of defy the ruling that the Supreme Court has laid down while trying to make this argument that insane. Those are all true. But at baseline, the basic problem as far as the Supreme Court was concerned is just that they didn't give him due process at all. You know, like all of those things would have come up in due process. They short circuited the whole thing. They put him on a plane. They flew him to El Salvador. That can't fly, essentially, according to the Supreme Court's ruling. The Supreme Court says this guy and these other people are entitled to some form of due process under law in the United States, and you

have to go get this guy back. The problem is this. The problem is that because Trump short-circuited the whole system by just putting these guys on a plane and handing them over to a different foreign country, the administration has been arguing all along that basically their hands are tied with all of this, right? They can't actually make President Bukele of El Salvador do anything, they argue. Obviously, we all know Bukele is doing this sort of as a favor to Donald Trump, holding these people as a favor to Donald Trump. The U.S. is paying for their incarceration down there. It is obviously clear to everybody that the White House could ask him to give these people back and they would give them back. But the Supreme Court in its ruling basically left the White House like an inch of wiggle room here because they said you have to do what you can to facilitate his return.

But it is not necessarily clear or the district court may have overstepped a little bit by saying that you need to effectuate his return. They're basically saying the court can't actually command the US to do a specific foreign policy move with a demand that a certain outcome come, because in theory, Bokele could deny his return. But it is a very minor procedural distinction because everybody knows that if Trump actually wants this guy back, Bokele would give him back. Now, the problem is that the White House over the weekend has been signaling that they are incredibly eager to basically try to drive a Mack truck through that one inch of wiggle room.

They're trying to pry it open and make it the whole thing. Carolyn Leavitt, the White House press secretary, she said on Friday, the Supreme Court made their ruling last night very clear that it's the administration's responsibility to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return. President of El Salvador is coming to the White House on Monday. Does President Trump want him to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia with him? The Supreme Court made their ruling last night very clear that it's the administration's responsibility to facilitate the return,

not to effectuate the return. I believe the Department of Justice just filed another brief in the lower court. I would defer you to that for any updates. And then Donald Trump clarified that a little bit yesterday on Truth Social. He said, because Bichelle is coming on Monday to meet him at the White House, he said, looking forward to seeing President Bichelle of El Salvador on Monday. Our nations are working closely together, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. President Bekele has graciously accepted into his nation's custody some of the most violent alien enemies of the world, and in particular, the United States. These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign nation,

and their future is up to President B and his government. They will never threaten or menace our citizens again. Just one point on that, because that really does, just in so many words, illustrate the ridiculous kind of like song and dance that they're doing here. Because Trump is saying, you know, the Supreme Court has said that we need to try and go get this guy back. But unfortunately, it's not up to us. It's up to Bekele whether or not we're going to get him back. And we're never going to get him back.

He says it there. Bekele doesn't say they will never threaten or menace our citizens again. Trump says that. I mean, Trump is already giving away the fact that but Kelly is not giving it back because but Kelly knows that in his own heart of hearts, Trump doesn't want him back. So this is I mean, we are already like they're trying to pretend that this is all just kind of like legal wrangling

and and just sort of like their interpretation and they're trying to follow the Supreme Court's ruling. But it is complete horseshit. I mean, they are out here preparing to, we will see whether this changes by Monday or by Tuesday or this upcoming week. But every signal that we're getting out of the White House right now is that they are prepared to defy at least the spirit and basically also the letter of what the Supreme Court ruled last week. So here's my next question, because if you were, I don't know, a halfway decent person who cared about the competency of our country and who cared about basic human decency, right? If you were like, man, we got this wrong. We accidentally sent this guy and he wasn't supposed to be there.

Wouldn't you try to get him back just because it's the right thing to do? And if not, if that's obviously too, I guess, too high a bar to expect out of these people, like, what is the reason for not though? Is it that he doesn't want, is he really thinks this person's a bad guy and that we need, you know, him out of the country, sorry for the bubbles, or is he thinking to himself, I just can't admit a mistake. We can't let this look like we did an oopsie here. Yeah. From the point of view of the administration, it is a little bit of both. So they are on the one hand, ever since this story broke, they've been basically saying, yes, we were not supposed

to deport this guy for administrative reasons, but also we're totally glad he's gone. He's an MS-13 gang member. We have all this intelligence saying he's actually super high up in MS-13, all of that stuff. Completely spurious, by the way. They have not given a shred of evidence to suggest that any of that is actually true. If you run back the actual kind of like evidentiary chain of how it came to be the case that this guy ever got associated with MS-13 in the first place. It's on the word of some local cop who arrested him, who had insane reliability issues throughout his tenure, who's no longer a police officer, but is now doing contract work for these jokers in the immigration system. There is no good reason to believe that this guy has ever been an MS-13, but that is the position of the government.

So on the one hand, they're trying to kind of smear him personally in this way and trying to say that, yes, we weren't supposed to deport him, but we are sticking to the narrative that he is a dangerous person who's better out of the country. generally strategic purpose, which is that this whole thing is built on moving quickly, having all of the momentum, you know, maximum ask for forgiveness rather than permission, but also don't really ask for forgiveness. I mean, like they are building a system that has its own inertia where the whole previous way that we dealt with people who are in our country illegally and processed who gets to stay and who has to go back, all of that stuff has been just swept aside. You know, they're on the train and they're laying the track in front of the train. And the second that they start encountering resistance, the second that they start actually bouncing off of courts and actually having to accommodate themselves, even to the Supreme

Court, I mean, to any kind of outside strictures on what they can and can't do, the whole thing is kind of off the rails as far as what they're trying to do. As far as, I mean, they truly are trying to roll out something here where they are accountable only to themselves and trying to sell that to the American people as, well, these people are just gang members and terrorists and all that stuff anyway. And so you should just let us get away with this and kind of like whether by actively supporting it or just by not really paying attention, just kind of being like, yeah, the administration's fighting the Supreme Court over all this.

The administration's fighting, you know, these people's lawyers over all of this. Who really knows who's who's at fault? And I guess on on net, I'm just glad they're dealing with the drug dealers and the terrorists and the gang members. That's kind of the thing that they're trying to sell. And the second that they start actually getting punched back in a way that that, you know, the law draws blood on them, the whole system starts to teeter a little more than they're comfortable with. And so I was reading and now, you know, there's multiple cases of erroneously shipping people who are here in the country to prisons. But there's also the gay makeup artist that has also been sent. I can't remember which case it is that the judge was also saying.

It's not a state secret. Like, if you have evidence that these people are MS-13 or Trendy Dog or whatever, like, bring it forward. And this is where, this is something I don't understand, is they keep saying they have, like, classified evidence, like, they know that there's evidence. They're not showing it to anybody. It's the same same way with some of these people that they're deporting the students. They're like, no, no, no.

We've got evidence that they're really, you know, working for her moss or whatever. Like, are they just lying or are they not making it available to people? What is the deal? I never want to like accuse somebody of actively lying when it is not like crystal clear that they are actively lying. But I think it is very pertinent that they are doing this not only about classified stuff. Like some of this has been classified stuff. Some of this is like, yeah, we have intelligence reports about these guys that suggest. And this is the guy we've been talking about, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He's the guy who they've said, no, we have intelligence.

We're not going to show you, but we know him to be high up in MS-13. But the guy you mentioned a second ago, Andre Hernandez, his story came out a few weeks before. Their corroborating evidence that they have not released isn't classified at all. They're saying they've seen social media posts of his that indicate he's in a gang. Well, you could release that. There's no reason why you wouldn't. There's there's no national security secrets on this guy's, you know, Instagram or Facebook wall or whatever. And so that is where you really do get into like, OK, well, like, show us the money or we will think you're lying. And also, you guys lie about other stuff all the time constantly. So, like, why would we be giving you the benefit of the doubt here? But again, I think it gets back to what I was talking about a minute ago, where they are fighting really hard against the idea that they have to prove anything to anybody in court ever at all. I mean, like that's, that is the thing that is the through line to all of this strategy is not that like, in theory, if they had this stuff, they could bring it before a judge

and get this demonstrated, right? But they would not see that as a win because their whole goal is to short circuit that process and not have to go before a judge at all and just be able to, based on their own internal assessments, put people on these buses, planes, trains, whatever, and get them out of the country, throw them in prison in El Salvador.

And that's the thing they're trying to sell the public on. Yeah, and that actually, I mean, when you think about it, it makes a ton of sense from their perspective because what they're trying to do is fight hard on these early cases that they don't have to prove anything, right? And if they can get away with saying, nope, we don't have to prove this, that sets a precedent for them to be able to continue to do this for the next three and a half years. Yeah, yeah.

Although what is strange is that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around part of this. It almost feels like they're kind of down a strategic cul-de-sac in the way that you describe, because all this stuff with Kilmer Obrego Garcia now, this guy who was mistakenly deported, who's already in El Salvador, they're fighting this total have already issued, you know, further stays on extremely solid legal grounds based on what the Supreme Court just said, that the Trump administration can't send any more people there without giving them due process. So it's not, it's really not clear to me, like if they were to win the, even if they were to kind of like get away with this horrible, horrible thing of the guys that they already sent on this national security pretext that we physically lack the power to get them back sort of as a nation, which again is insane. And I can't believe we're talking about this, but, but even if they were to kind of like win that argument, it's not necessarily clear to me how that gets them any closer to

deporting the hundreds of thousands or millions of people that they want to deport next. But I mean, I don't know, like, I don't know if they're just not thinking quite that far ahead or, or, or if they just aren't, like I was saying before, aren't willing to give an inch for any reason on any of these people ever. I mean, the other thing is like, it's a real problem for them. If a guy comes back from the El Salvador torture dungeon, right. And is able to like get on TV and say what was, what it was like, I mean, like they don't want that to happen. Right. Oh yeah. That's it. That that's of course that makes total sense, right? This is a PR nightmare for them. It's not just like an oopsie.

Yeah, this guy comes back and he talks. Right. Everybody wants to talk to him. He lands. He is surrounded by reporters where and he is like, I am just a father. I was never part of MS-13. That cop was harassing me. And like, yeah, that's true. It's a huge black eye for the administration. I was thinking about it more like, you know, if they went through the process of getting him back, that would leave people with the idea that they actually wanted to get it right and they don't want to let anybody have that idea. But it would actually be a huge problem for them if these guys come back, which I guess here's one more thing that I just wonder about as a regular old consumer of news. Can Democrats not fly to El Salvador and sort of make a more of a racket about this? Like, I understand actually why from a PR standpoint at the moment. So Fox News was had like a headline. It was like Dems trying to get dangerous, bring dangerous criminals back to the country.

Right. That's what they that's how they want to play this particular game because it's much harder to be like yeah well yeah they say he's a gang member we say there's no evidence of that either way the guy deserved due process because that's what we do here in the country but i i know listening to voters that like the second you say somebody's a gang member or part of MS-13, like you lose. Most people are like, I'm not sure I care that much what happens to this person. But I do think like how are we? Well, so like maybe that's why Dems are doing it.

It feels like some Dems should get on a plane to El Salvador and say and make a ruckus is what Republicans did. All they did was like go down to the border and stand there with cameras and like dress in camo and cosplay like they're border security. Should Democrats not go there and say like they're just deporting people that they have no proof for criminals whatsoever? Yeah, I so one caveat, I always like break out in a cold sweat whenever anybody asks me like the what should Dems do question, just because like somewhat like you, I did not come up in those circles at all. I don't have like the the the bedrock mental infrastructure for what Democrats should ever do under any circumstances. Um, but, but I guess, I guess the, the steel man argument for, for not necessarily participating in that is that you are correct that, that like you're, you're worried about PR, not necessarily in the way that you describe, like like I don't I don't think if I'm a Democrat, I'm necessarily worried, man, if I go down and do that,

they're going to say that I love MS-13, although obviously they will they will do that. They will say you love MS-13. But even just from like kind of an objective outside, like what's best for these people who are wrongfully detained sort of thing. I think that you want this to be a fight between Donald Trump and the law, not necessarily a fight between Donald Trump and congressional Democrats or whatever. You know what I mean? I do. If Democrats had some greater, larger platform or whatever that was shining a light on this in a way that it wasn't having a light shown on it otherwise, that would be one thing.

But I feel like part of the whole problem with Democrats right now is that their messaging apparatus is completely broken and it doesn't roll down the road, right? And you're totally right that people do sort of tune out like, well, okay, he's an MS-13 gang member, why should I care about his rights or whatever? And that's why I think the conversation always needs to be, you need to prove that he's an MS-13 gang member. Like you said, he's an MS-13 gang member. You think he's an MS-13 gang member. Shouldn't that be demonstrated to somebody's satisfaction, some immigration judge, some, you know, like literally any adversarial third party to check that statement. And I don't know whether Democrats getting involved helps that effort. I don't know whether it hurts that effort, but I think that needs to be the effort if you're going

to sell the lawlessness of this to the public, which you need to do because it's totally lawless. And as many, many people have pointed out, the weird thing about getting rid of due process and saying it's irrevocable is like, yeah, he said you're an MS-13 gang member, but what if he bundles you onto a plane next and says you're an MS-13 gang member? There's literally no checking that according to the administration's theory of the case. That's I guess that's what I'd say to that. OK, last question. Maybe this is either an unfair question or maybe it's easier terrain for you as a as a young conservative studying the conservative side. When he if he finds a loophole, right, that the court obviously doesn't intend, all nine of them said he had to

facilitate the return. When he doesn't, does that not start to sour some of these Supreme Court justices on him a little bit? Like, isn't it dangerous for him to just ignore the Supreme Court? Yeah, I think he's playing with fire to a significant degree. I think that he should be pretty confident about his 6-3 conservative majority and the home field advantage that three of whom he appointed, the home field advantage that that gives him in all the future stuff that's going to come before the court about stuff he's trying to do over the next three and a half years. But at the same time, I almost feel like that piece of analysis is like a dispatch from a world where he is playing with any of the regular rules at all, right? I mean, like we have not gotten very much indication that Trump's strategy here is anything other than to basically dare the Supreme Court. It's what he does with everybody, right? Trump's genius in warming his way up through the Republican Party all along has been that he will not let you remain neutral on the question of him at bottom.

He doesn't let other people in the government do balls and strikes on Trump. You have to be pro-Trump or you have to be anti-Trump. And if you're anti-Trump, then he purges you from the Republican party. And that is, that's kind of how he has, uh, you know, he picked one fight after another, got rid of everyone who was against him. And that's kind of where he is now. And that's just, that was somewhat political strategy, but it's also just the way he pursues everything, right? I mean, it's just the way he goes. I don't want to say that's absolutely what's going to happen with the court because he did have, you know, that one thing kind of was a little eyebrow raising over the weekend where he's like, yeah, if the Supreme Court tells me to go get a person back, I'm going

to go get them back. I respect the Supreme Court that was sandwiched between these two pieces of content that we already mentioned, seeing that that made it seem like, no, that's not happening at all. So who knows exactly how you take that? It's possible that Trump could be like, OK, this on this one thing, the juice is not worth the squeeze to actually like maybe he backs away from the ledge and maybe maybe the court is happier about it. Who knows? But he also might just keep daring John Roberts to to like kind of stop giving him the inch of wiggle room. You know, John Roberts being an institutionalist, he might be betting on the Roberts court essentially being like a little bit too fearful to really dig into teals

and really stop him on some of these things. And I don't know how that would go. I mean, we're so far off the map of anything that has happened ever, at least in my lifetime, that it's just hard to even assess where the dominoes fall in my lifetime, that that that it's just hard to even assess, you know, where the dominoes fall in a situation like that.

I just I I would like to hope we will not get to it. But every every kind of again, every piece of information that we're getting right now certainly seems to be vectoring in that direction. So that's really cool. It's like a cool place we are as we come out of this weekend and what what what the hell is going to happen on any of this stuff the next couple of days. So I guess we'll find out. Yeah. You mean that's cool and this is definitely not cool? Yes. I'm not excited. I'm not super eager. I guess we will have some kind of resolutions, or maybe we won't. Maybe everything will just kind of march forward in this weird

half on, half off kind of way that plays to Trump's benefit because there are no clear rules and he just has so much room to maneuver. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how the Supreme Court will respond to any of this. So so we'll see. I don't know about that. What I do know is like the guy's in prison. And so like there's a guy somewhere and either needs he's either going to stay there or he's going to get brought back. And so there's going to be an outcome here. Yeah, that's a really good point. Well, Andrew, thank you for explaining that to me. I have been trying to get my head around

all the back and forth. It's sort of like tariffs, though. None of us alone have the bandwidth to try to be smart about all of these things. So thank you for being smart on this issue. And thanks to all of you for watching another episode of our Bulwark Takes. We will be back with updates on this tomorrow. So thanks, guys. We'll see you later.