section_path: "Facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return/Return to the appeals court
section_name: Return to the appeals court
paragraph_text: Return to the appeals court
  
  On April 16, the Trump administration returned to the Fourth Circuit, asking the court to stay Xinis's order for expedited discovery, calling it a "fishing expedition". The next day, judges King, Thacker, and Wilkinson unanimously denied the appeal. In a seven-page ruling, Judge Wilkinson said that Trump was evidently seeking the "weakening the courts" through his "constant intimations of its illegitimacy", and he warned that Trump was also harming himself by creating "a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions". AP News described the order as an "extraordinary condemnation". The court called the government's request "both extraordinary and premature" and went on to say:
  
  The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.
  
  The appeals court rejected the government's argument that all it must do to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return is to remove domestic obstacles, ruling Trump officials are not allowed "to do essentially nothing." Judge Wilkinson stated that Abrego Garcia is entitled to due process regardless of whether he is a member of MS-13, and if the government is confident about its allegation that he is, it can initiate immigration court "proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order" once he is back in the US.
  
  On April 16, the Trump administration returned to the Fourth Circuit, asking the court to stay Xinis's order for expedited discovery, calling it a "fishing expedition". The next day, judges King, Thacker, and Wilkinson unanimously denied the appeal. In a seven-page ruling, Judge Wilkinson said that Trump was evidently seeking the "weakening the courts" through his "constant intimations of its illegitimacy", and he warned that Trump was also harming himself by creating "a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions". AP News described the order as an "extraordinary condemnation". The court called the government's request "both extraordinary and premature" and went on to say:
  
  The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.
  
  The appeals court rejected the government's argument that all it must do to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return is to remove domestic obstacles, ruling Trump officials are not allowed "to do essentially nothing." Judge Wilkinson stated that Abrego Garcia is entitled to due process regardless of whether he is a member of MS-13, and if the government is confident about its allegation that he is, it can initiate immigration court "proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order" once he is back in the US.