How deportations ignited a clash between the White House and the courts

Diane Rehm: On My Mind

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🗓️ 16 April 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Can the courts act as a check on the Trump administration’s power?

Though this question is not new, it has taken on an urgency as the case of a Maryland man accidentally deported to a prison in El Salvador has highlighted the White House’s increasingly combative stance towards the judiciary.

This week Trump’s team appeared to flout a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court that said the government must “facilitate” Kilmer Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. Days later, a federal court judge threatened to hold the government in contempt for “doing nothing.”

“This country was built on checks and balances,” says Joan Biskupic, chief Supreme Court analyst for CNN and author of several book about our judicial system, including “Nine Black Robes.” “If we don’t have checks on what a very powerful executive branch is doing right now,” she warns, “we don’t have the same democracy we had.”

Biskupic joins Diane to talk about what might come next in the legal showdown over the administration’s recent deportations and what it means for the legitimacy of the courts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Diane. On my mind, can the courts act as a check on the Trump administration's power?
0:10.2	The case of a Maryland man accidentally deported to a prison in El Salvador has highlighted the White House's increasingly combative stance toward the judiciary.
0:24.0	This week, Trump's team seemed to float a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court,
0:30.9	saying they must facilitate Kilmara-Abrego-Garcia's return.
0:36.4	And now, a circuit court judge has threatened to hold the government
0:41.0	in contempt for doing nothing.
0:44.4	This country was built on checks and balances. And if we don't have checks on what a very
0:49.8	powerful executive branch is doing right now, we don't have the same democracy we had.
0:55.6	Joan Buscupik is Chief Supreme Court analyst for CNN. She's written several books about our judicial
1:03.8	system. She joins me to talk about what this case means for the power of the courts and whether
1:10.8	it could lead to a constitutional
1:13.2	crisis.
1:16.0	Joan, let's start with the story of Kilmar-Abrego-Garcia.
1:21.6	The man accidentally deported to prison in El Salvador, remind us of how he ended up there.
1:33.1	This is a Maryland man who had been living in the United States.
1:37.1	He came here from El Salvador, and he did come undocumented, but he'd been living here,
1:42.3	and in 2019, an immigration judge said that he, you know,
1:49.0	should not be here. But at the same time, that immigration judge said that he should not be deported
1:56.2	to El Salvador, his home country, because he could face persecution there.
2:01.5	So he has hanging over his head, no removal to El Salvador order.
2:08.8	And on March 15th, the Trump administration mistakenly, after he had been arrested a few days
2:15.8	earlier, mistakenly sent him to El Salvador.
	...

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