The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s decision to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national living in Maryland, from an El Salvador prison where federal officials sent hundreds of suspected criminals and gang members in March.

Abrego Garcia, 29, was deported to the El Salvadoran megaprison last month for being an alleged MS-13 gang member, but his attorneys maintain he does not have any gang ties.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered federal officials to coordinate his return back to Maryland in a Monday order, calling his deportation “wholly unlawful.” On Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with Xinis. 

“On March 15, 2025, the United States removed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador, where he is currently detained in the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT),” the order states. “The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal.” 

A prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S. to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on Sunday. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)

“At the police station, the four young men were placed into different rooms and questioned. Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was asked if he was a gang member; when he told police he was not, they said that they did not believe him and repeatedly demanded that he provide information about other gang members,” court documents state. “The police told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that he would be released if he cooperated, but he repeatedly explained that he did not have any information to give because he did not know anything.”

A judge later granted his release, and Abrego Garcia married his now-wife in 2019. He did, however, miss the birth of his child while in federal custody, the federal complaint says. 

Abrego Garcia was arrested in Baltimore on March 12 after he worked a shift as a sheet metal apprentice in Baltimore and picked up his now-5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house, the complaint says.