UPDATE: Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily stayed the district court's order setting a deadline for Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return from El Salvador, ordering the man's lawyers to file a response by 5 p.m. Tuesday to the Trump admin's request that SCOTUS block the district court's order.

At roughly the same time, however, Abrego Garcia's lawyers filed their response — although Roberts's order appears first on the docket.

As such, the question is now back to the Supreme Court. No reply is required in shadow docket requests, although one is often submitted. The court does not need to wait for a reply, so any reply should be submitted as quickly as a party thinks the court would need it/might act.

This temporary stay — regularly called an administrative stay — is not a decision on the government's request. Of course, in this situation, a temporary stay — administrative or otherwise — is justice denied for Abrego Garcia, who never should have been removed and should be back. But, it is not a ruling.

An administrative stay is generally intended to give the full court time to consider the matter and act.

It also says little to nothing about what Roberts thinks about the merits.

When there is an administrative stay, it always — by my recollection — has come from the circuit justice to whom the application is formally submitted and not the full court. Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, regularly has granted administrative stays when necessary in capital cases despite almost always ultimately allowing executions to proceed.

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Original report follows.

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BREAKING: The Trump administration’s effort to block a court ruling that it work to bring back a man the government admitted it improperly deported to El Salvador was rejected by an appeals court Monday morning, but now the case is in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied the government’s request for a stay in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case on Monday. Moments earlier, however, the Justice Department had already gone to the Supreme Court, asking for a stay from the justices.

The Fourth Circuit’s three-judge panel — which included Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a conservative Reagan appointee — was unanimous.

Under Friday’s order, then, the Trump administration remains required as of now “to facilitate and effectuate the return of Plaintiff Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States by no later than 11:59 PM on Monday, April 7, 2025.”

All three judges on the panel wrote or joined further concurring opinions beyond the order, explaining the reasons for their decisions.

"The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable," Judge Stephanie Thacker, an Obama appointee, wrote in concurrence, joined by Judge Robert Bruce King, a Clinton appointee.

Although Wilkinson disagreed around the edges with some aspects of Thacker’s opinion, his bottom line was just as clear: "It takes no small amount of imagination to understand that this is a path of perfect lawlessness, one that courts cannot condone."

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