The Trump administration admitted to mistakenly deporting a Maryland resident to a mega-prison in El Salvador, despite a court order prohibiting his removal from the country. Although it acknowledged the mistake, the government argued that it could not facilitate his return to the United States, where, according to court records submitted by his attorneys, he has lived with his family since 2011.
On Monday, in a legal filing, U.S. government lawyers acknowledged that Kilmar Armando Abrego GarcÃa, a Salvadoran resident of Maryland with his wife and five-year-old son, was deported despite having legal protection against removal. They emphasized that his wife and son, who has a disability, are U.S. citizens. “Although ICE was aware of his protection against deportation, Abrego GarcÃa was removed to El Salvador due to an administrative error,” the government stated in its report. However, authorities argued that the United States lacked jurisdiction to secure his return from CECOT prison.
In 2019, an immigration judge granted Abrego GarcÃa protected legal status, prohibiting his deportation to El Salvador. His attorneys explained that he fled to the United States at age 16 to escape gang violence. “Starting around 2006, gang members stalked, beat, and threatened to kidnap and kill him to pressure his parents into submitting to increasing extortion demands,” they stated in their legal filing.
Abrego GarcÃa has no criminal record in the United States or any other country, according to his legal team. Furthermore, he denied any gang affiliation, despite claims from the U.S. government, which, according to his attorneys, “has never provided a shred of evidence to support this baseless accusation.”
In its legal filing, first reported by The Atlantic, the government downplayed concerns that Abrego GarcÃa could be tortured or killed in CECOT. His attorney, Simón Sandoval-Moshenberg, stated that this case is unprecedented: “I have never seen a situation where the government knowingly deported someone who had already been granted protected status.”
The plaintiff’s attorneys argued that immigration authorities could have deported Abrego GarcÃa to any country except El Salvador. However, they claimed that “the defendants found these legal procedures bothersome, so they simply ignored them and deported Abrego GarcÃa to El Salvador anyway.”
Euronews reached out to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for comment. On March 16, the Trump administration deported more than 250 people without a hearing to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador under an agreement with the Central American country. The government accused them of being members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua and deported them under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that has only been invoked three times in U.S. history.
Abrego GarcÃa’s wife identified him in a photograph published in an article about CECOT. Although the image did not show the prisoners’ faces, she recognized her husband by his tattoos and two scars on his head.
