By its own admission, the Trump administration erred in deporting Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old married father of three who was living in Maryland until March 15, when he was seized by federal authorities. Abrego Garcia is imprisoned now in El Salvador in a maximum security facility designated for members of that country’s notorious gangs.

The Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision ruled that the administration should return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. That ought to have been the end of the matter.

But lawyers for President Donald Trump’s administration have refused to comply with this ruling, citing their belief that the courts can’t interfere with the executive branch’s conduct of foreign policy.

Abrego Garcia’s status, of course, has little to nothing to do with foreign relations. El Salvador, whose President Nayib Bukele was praised by Trump during an Oval Office visit Monday, would promptly return Abrego Garcia to these shores if Trump said to do so. Trump’s argument amounts to a flimsy excuse to defy the high court under the veneer of a constitutional rationale, attempting to convince Americans this is all just an ordinary intragovernmental disagreement over checks and balances.

Without saying so explicitly, Trump and his hard-line immigration advisers are telling the court, “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” And right now El Salvador has possession of Abrego Garcia.

It’s worth stating here that Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who came to the U.S. without authorization, obtained a court order in 2019 explicitly prohibiting deportation to his home country because he faced likely “future persecution” there. When Trump administration officials forcibly sent him back, they violated that existing court ruling.

In court filings, they described this violation as an “administrative error,” although outside of the judicial arena (where he can’t be punished for knowingly providing false information), Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on Friday that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was purposeful and appropriate. U.S. officials have alleged that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang; his attorneys have disputed the claim.

For Chief Justice John Roberts and his fellow justices, Trump’s maneuvering is stepping right up to the line of open defiance of the judicial branch.

To our mind, the justices have no one but themselves to blame for dragging this out. While the court clearly ordered the administration to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S., it opened the door a crack to further Trumpian resistance by saying U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis was right to rule the administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release but that she might have overshot her authority when she ordered they “effectuate” his release; the idea being that “effectuating” could improperly interfere with the executive’s conduct of foreign affairs.

A Justice Department lawyer suggested during a Tuesday hearing before Xinis that “facilitation” might mean allowing Abrego Garcia back into the U.S. if he can manage to get himself to a port of entry on his own. That’s absurd, of course, and Xinis disagreed with the DOJ attorney. But there remains doubt as to what “facilitation” entails.

In his second term, Trump and his team have made a habit of pushing virtually every executive power envelope they can find.

In light of the Supreme Court’s cautious wording, Xinis on Tuesday stopped short of finding the administration in contempt of court, instead ordering Trump officials to answer detailed questions under oath over the next few weeks about what they have or haven’t done to comply with the original order. That presumably would be the last step before a contempt finding, an outcome that likely would force the constitutional clash between Trump and the Supreme Court that Roberts surely would love to forestall.

Trump on Friday seemed leery of that sort of brinksmanship. “If the Supreme Court said, ‘Bring somebody back,’ I would do that,” the president said. “I respect the Supreme Court.”

So it appears now that the gamesmanship and foot-dragging will continue through at least the rest of April, an injustice in and of itself given the clear wrong that has occurred here.

Fair-minded Americans can understand the bottom line: A man permitted under court order to remain in this country was snatched from his family and sent to a brutal foreign prison without due process.

The high court delayed the day of reckoning, and we hope the Trump administration backs down. But if and when this case comes back to them, Roberts and company must demand in unequivocal terms that the executive branch correct its mistake.

And if the justices don’t? The message an administration determined to test the limits of executive power will receive is that it can ignore the Supreme Court with impunity.

Whatever opinion you hold about those who’ve entered our country without authorization, you surely shouldn’t favor an executive branch fashioning itself as judge, jury and imprisoner.

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