The Trump administration admitted for the first time that not all immigrants they sent to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador are violent criminals.
In a court filing on Monday, the Trump administration revealed they accidentally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father with protected legal status, to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”
“On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” attorneys wrote.
Trump lawyers also told the court that since Abrego Garcia is in Salvadoran custody the US is unable to bring him back home because American courts lack jurisdiction.
“They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,’’ Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told The Atlantic, which broke the news about the filing. “If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”
Abrego Garcia fled gang violence in El Salvador over a decade ago. He received protected legal status in 2019 after a U.S. immigration judge found he would likely be targeted by gangs if he was deported. He is married to an American citizen. The couple has a 5-year-old son who is disabled.
Abrego Garcia does not have a criminal record, but the Trump administration called him a “danger to the community” and falsely labeled him as an active member of MS-13 gang after his arrest by ICE in mid-March.
Abrego Garcia’s wife and son never saw him again until March 16 when she recognized him in a photo of detainees entering intake at the maximum security prison in El Salvador where inmates are likely to be tortured or killed.
Sandoval-Moshenberg is asking the court to order the Trump administration to ask for Abrego Garcia’s return and to withhold payment to the Salvadoran government if necessary. The United States is reportedly paying El Salvador $6 million a year to jail U.S. deportees.
“Abrego-Garcia was not on the initial manifest of the Title 8 flight to be removed to El Salvador,” Robert Cerna, an acting ICE field office director, said in his declaration. “Rather, he was an alternate. As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that Abrego-Garcia should not be removed.”
“Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13,” the declaration reads.
