Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance said Tuesday President Donald Trump has always been on a collision course with the Supreme Court, adding that the current standoff is "inevitably about what the Court can and is willing to do to enforce its orders" regarding the return of a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador by the administration.
"We've seen a Supreme Court that has really tried to avoid this point. They've tried to treat Donald Trump as though he's a good faith actor," she said during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"It's clear with the administration's interpretation of this order that any reasonable person reading that order understood that the United States was supposed to return a man that they had illegally deported, back to the United States," Vance said.
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She said the Trump administration is "willing to override the order and count how many angels can dance on the head of a pin." Vance said this shows that the Court is now on a direct collision course with Trump.
"They will have to order him and make it stick, or he will do nothing," Vance added.
On Monday, during a press conference alongside El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office, Trump claimed that the Supreme Court had ruled 9–0 in his favor and that the ruling in the case meant that the U.S. government would have to provide a plane only if the Salvadoran president chose to return Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongfully deported to an infamous Salvadoran prison.
“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said when asked by reporters if he would help return the man, adding that returning him would be akin to smuggling “a terrorist into the United States.”
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Legal analysts say Trump is misrepresenting the ruling and defying the Court in the process.
AlterNet reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.
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