A legal expert for CNN is challenging claims that President Trump is defying a Supreme Court ruling in the high-profile deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. On Tuesday, CNN Chief Legal Correspondent Paula Reid joined Jake Tapper on air to clarify the Court’s stance, amid growing media allegations that the Trump administration is blatantly disregarding a Supreme Court order. According to Reid, however, that narrative doesn’t align with the facts.
“They did not order the administration to return him to the United States,” Reid stated bluntly. “They said that they need to facilitate this return. They could have said, ‘We order him returned,’ but they didn’t do that.” The segment quickly gained traction online as Reid dismantled the media’s latest hoax: the claim that the administration is violating a Supreme Court ruling. “They’re working within the ambiguity that the Supreme Court justices gave them,” she added, calling the court’s language “mushy.”
Tapper pressed the matter, pointing out that the Court had ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor and used language implying the administration should facilitate his return. But Reid was unequivocal—legally, the administration is not overstepping its bounds. Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident and father of three was deported to El Salvador on March 15. A former unionized sheet metal apprentice, Abrego Garcia had lived in the U.S. since 2011 and was granted protection from deportation due to alleged credible threats from gangs in his home country.
The Trump administration has consistently pointed out that previous immigration courts ordered him to be deported before the Biden regime extended undue protection to him. The administration also argues that his affiliation to the dangerous MS-13 gang has been repeatedly verified. He is currently being held in El Salvador’s CECOT, a high-security prison notorious for housing violent gang members.
Critics of the administration have seized on the case, accusing President Trump of defying a Supreme Court decision that upheld a lower court’s directive to “facilitate and effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return. But as Paula Reid explained, the language of the ruling is key. “Facilitate” does not equate to “mandate,” she noted. Since the Court stopped short of directly ordering his return, the administration retains legal flexibility—particularly as El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele continues to refuse to release Abrego Garcia.
Bukele has called Abrego Garcia a “terrorist” and insists he has no authority to return him to the U.S., adding another layer of complexity to the case. Trump’s team has supported that stance, arguing that foreign policy decisions fall squarely under the president’s executive authority—not the jurisdiction of the courts.
