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‘This Should Be Shocking:’ Read a Federal Appeals Panel’s Sharp Rebuke of the Trump Administration

By Adam Liptak and Alan Feuer April 17, 2025

A federal appeals court in Virginia issued a striking opinion on Thursday, reaffirming that the Trump administration had to take a more active approach in seeking the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador last month despite a court order expressly forbidding him from being sent there.

But the opinion, authored by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative jurist appointed by President Ronald Reagan, contained far more than simple legal instructions to the White House. The brief order also rebuked Trump officials for their apparent disregard of the bedrock principles of due process and for allowing a man whom they have acknowledged they wrongfully deported to continue to languish in a foreign prison.

At the same time, Judge Wilkinson, in an almost elegiac tone, gave an emphatic reminder that American democracy rests in part on mutual respect between the executive and judicial branches and lamented recent attacks by President Trump and his allies on the federal courts.

The New York Times annotated the court’s opinion.

Download the original PDF.

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