The Trump administration admits that it made an error in sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, but is trying to claim, oopsie, now he’s out of the country, out of our hands, can’t do anything about it.
A federal court and an appeals court ruled that the administration needs to get him back, but the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay delaying the court order from going into effect, because of course it did.
U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, D-Va., are taking up the cause, pressing TV camera-conscious Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to return Garcia, who was living legally under protected status in Maryland with his family until he was ripped out of a car and put on a plane.
“It is unacceptable that anyone would be deported without proper due process, especially where an immigration judge has granted the individual protected status that explicitly prohibits his return to El Salvador. We demand that the administration bring Mr. Abrego Garcia home immediately,” the senators wrote in a letter to Noem and Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE.
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Catching you up on how egregious the Trump administration error is in this case, Abrego Garcia came to the United States in 2011 as a teenager fleeing gang threats in El Salvador, his home country.
He got caught up in a criminal case in 2019 in which he was arrested by ICE over an allegation that he was involved with MS-13, which a judge later dismissed, the judge noting that “it was in fact Mr. Abrego Garcia who was at risk of being the victim of gang violence,” the senators wrote in their letter.
“At the time, the Trump administration made no effort to appeal the judge’s ruling or pursue Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation further. Court filings attest that Mr. Abrego Garcia has complied with regular ICE check-ins, has no criminal charges, and has had no contact with any other law-enforcement agency since his release in 2019,” the senators wrote.
“Mr. Abrego Garcia is currently being held at CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador notorious for human rights abuses, after being deported in violation of the law to the very country where his return was impermissible,” the senators wrote. “And when the administration makes a mistake as severe as sending an individual with protected status to a foreign prison, it cannot simply shrug off responsibility and allege that there is nothing it can do to reunite him with his wife and child, who are American citizens.”
It’s hard to fathom why the Trump administration is fighting back against the court orders, particularly given that it has conceded the point that the deportation was in error.
Unless the end goal is just to show how insidiously cruel the draconian deportation policy is in general.
“I don’t think there is anyone in this country who genuinely believes that if we didn’t just pick up the phone and make a good faith phone call, that we couldn’t get him back within a day or two,” said Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, in an interview on MSNBC on Monday afternoon.
“I mean, the connections between our government and the government of El Salvador when it comes to these deportations, to this prison – they put Kristi Noem inside the walls of the prison, and they got her back out. They can get him back out,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
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Chris Graham
