Trump Administration Lies About Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Explained

lie, deny, double down, deflect ...

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Donald Trump's deportation agenda has drawn its focus around Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man the administration illegally shipped to an infamous torture prison in El Salvador — an action they admitted was a mistake, citing an "administrative error." The Supreme Court has since ruled that the administration must bring him back to America, but Trump, his officials, and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have indicated this won't be happening.

Trump's team has since been arguing against the idea that they should have to follow due process and obey the courts, with Vice President J.D. Vance suggesting Tuesday night that the law and the courts should be secondary to ridding the nation of undocumented immigrants. Trump Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Tuesday night that "under the due process that these Democrats so venerate for illegal invaders, it is legally impermissible for him to have one more minute in this country."

This is false, as are many of the other points Trump and his officials are making in support of their sending a man with no criminal record to a brutal prison in a nation that a federal judge had prohibited the United States from sending him to. Here are some of the biggest claims the administration are making about Abrego Garcia, and the reality of his case:

LIE: He is a dangerous criminal

"He's an MS-13 gang member classified as a terrorist that was removed from this country," Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, said this morning on Fox News. "We got rid of a dangerous person, an El Salvador national, who was returned to the country of El Salvador — so he's home."

The Trump administration has repeatedly referred to Abrego Garcia as a dangerous criminal — but Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime, in the United States or El Salvador, a fact that his attorneys have repeatedly attested to in court filings.

The Trump administration and their supporters have presented no evidence in court or elsewhere to substantiate the claim that Abrego Garcia is, as Homan put it, a "public safety threat."

LIE: He is a gang member

Trump officials have repeatedly described Abrego Garcia as a gang member, particularly a member of MS-13. J.D. Vance even called him a "convicted MS-13 gang member."

There is no actual evidence of this.

According to court documents, Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador around 2011 — at the age of 16 — after several years of Barrio 18 gang members having "stalked, hit, and threatened to kidnap and kill him in order to coerce his parents" into paying extortions to the gang in order to protect the family's pupusa business.

Garcia entered the U.S. without documentation, and he moved to Maryland to live with his brother, who had also fled threats from Barrio 18. In 2016, he met his now-wife, a U.S. citizen. In 2019, Abrego Garcia, who worked in construction, was arrested alongside three other men while soliciting work outside of Home Depot. The arresting officers accused Abrego Garcia of being a gang member and pressed him and the other men arrested to give up information on other gang members during interrogation. They later transferred him into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, where deportation proceedings were initiated.

In order to justify the detention and potential deportation, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) submitted a Gang Field Interview Sheet (GFIS) to immigration court. According to Abrego Garcia's petition last month, the GFIS police submitted explained that "the only reason to believe Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was a gang member was that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique." The "Western" clique of MS-13 "operates in Brentwood, Long Island, in New York, a state that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia has never lived in," the petition read.

The Trump administration has insisted that because two immigration judges denied Abrego Garcia bail during his 2019 detention and asylum proceedings, he is an adjudicated member of MS-13. An immigration judge ultimately ruled that Abrego Garcia — who has consistently denied any gang affiliation — had provided "credible responses to the questions asked," that his "testimony was internally consistent, externally consistent with his asylum application and other documents, and appeared free of embellishment," and that "he provided substantial documentation buttressing his claims" of persecution in El Salvador by Barrio 18, which continued to harass members of his family who fled to Guatemala.

The judge imposed a "withholding from removal" order, which prohibited his deportation to El Salvador.

LIE: He is a terrorist

Trump classified MS-13 and other Latin American gangs as terrorist organizations through an executive order signed in January. The designation has been treated by the Trump administration as a one-stop shop to label any undesirable as a "terrorist" by accusing them of having gang affiliations.

Once again, Abrego Garcia has never been charged or convicted of a crime, gang-related or otherwise, but that hasn't stopped the Trump administration from describing him as an international terror suspect.

On Monday, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin directly compared Abrego Garcia to Osama bin Laden during an interview on Fox News. "The media would love for you to believe that [Kilmar Abrego Garcia] is a media darling, that he's just a Maryland father," she said. "Well, Osama bin Laden was also a father and yet he wasn't a good guy, and they're actually both terrorists."

In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court for Maryland that same day, DHS Acting General Counsel Joseph Mazzara wrote that Abrego Garcia's withholding from removal is invalid "because of his membership in MS-13, which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization."

The government has never charged or convicted Abrego Garcia of any activity related to MS-13, nor have they offered any real proof that he was a member. Nevertheless, the Trump administration is calling him a terrorist.

LIE: The Trump administration was correct in sending him to El Salvador

The Trump administration has characterized Abrego Garcia's deportation as justified, despite the lack of due process. "He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador," Stephen Miller said on Monday. "This was the right person sent to the right place."

In the 2019 court order granting Abrego Garcia protection from removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act, Judge David Jones noted that his request would have been subject to "mandatory denial" if it was proven that he had "participated in the persecution of others, has been convicted of a particularly serious crime, has committed a serious nonpolitical crime outside of the U.S., or is a danger to U.S. national security."

DHS presented no evidence that would support such an accusation.

Despite the rhetoric from Miller and other top officials, the Trump administration has acknowledged in court filings that Abrego Garcia should not have been deported to El Salvador, chalking the mistake up to an "administrative error."

LIE: The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration

The courts have reviewed the evidence — or lack thereof — against Abrego Garcia, as well as the government's own admission that his deportation was a mistake, and instructed them to take steps to bring him back.

In a rare 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a lower court had "properly" required "the government to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador."

The justices added that while the lower court had also required the Trump administration to "effectuate" such a return, the "scope of the term 'effectuate' in the District Court's order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court's authority."

The Trump administration has seized on this semantic concession — one with little actual effect on the court's opinion — to claim victory, alleging the Supreme Court ruled in their favor. On Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters in the Oval Office that the administration would only intervene to return Abrego Garcia if and when the Salvadoran government decides to give him up. Miller, meanwhile, argued that facilitating his return to the United States would be akin to "kidnapping" a citizen of El Salvador.

Bondi's DOJ claimed in a statement last week: "As the Supreme Court correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the President to conduct foreign affairs. By directly noting the deference owed to the Executive Branch, this ruling once again illustrates that activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the President's authority to conduct foreign policy."

This is very clearly not the court's intent. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the administration was essentially asking the court to grant them permission to "leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law," and that the "only argument the government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong."

Sotomayor noted that the federal government regularly works with other countries to "facilitate" the return of a migrant or alien to the United States for the purpose of adjudicating immigration proceedings. "The government's argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene," she wrote.

LIE: The Trump administration doesn't have the ability to bring him back from El Salvador

The Trump administration has implied that it doesn't have any legal right to bring Abrego Garcia back. J.D. Vance wrote that it would be tantamount to "invad[ing] El Salvador" to retrieve him.

The Trump administration literally entered into a contractual financial agreement regarding the treatment and holding of Abrego Garcia and the hundreds of other prisoners sent to prison in El Salvador alongside him. While the Trump administration is now claiming its agreement with El Salvador is "classified" and may be a "State Secret," as conservative writer Andrew McCarthy explained in a piece for the National Review earlier this week, Abrego Garcia remains in "constructive custody" of the U.S. government. The administration should be fully able to comply with the Supreme Court's order to bring him back.

There's also the fact that it's highly unlikely Bukele would put up any resistance if Trump actually pushed him to give up Abrego Garcia — given the U.S. is paying his country millions to imprison people. "I miss you already, President T," the Salvadoran president wrote after leaving the White House on Monday.