President Donald Trump’ s administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting a Maryland man with protected legal status to a notorious El Salvador prison last month, but is arguing against returning him to the United States because of his alleged gang ties and the U.S. government's lack of power over the Central American nation.
Lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, 29, maintain he is not affiliated with MS-13 or any other street gang and argue the U.S. government “has never produced an iota of evidence” that he does.
Abrego Garcia was arrested in Baltimore on March 12 after working a shift as a sheet metal apprentice in Baltimore and picking up his 5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house, his lawyers' complaint stated.
Abrego Garcia was then sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which activists say is rife with abuses and where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside. Abrego Garcia’s wife later saw him in photos and video from the prison, identifying her husband through his distinctive tattoos and two scars on his head.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials admitted in a court filing on Monday to an “administrative error” in deporting him. The government’s acknowledgment sparked immediate uproar from immigration advocates while prompting Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials to repeat the allegation that he’s a gang member.
MS-13 allegation stems from a 2019 arrest
Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador around 2011, “fleeing gang violence,” according to his lawyers, and made his way to Maryland to join his older brother, a U.S. citizen.
“Beginning around 2006, gang members had stalked, hit, and threatened to kidnap and kill him in order to coerce his parents to succumb to their increasing demands for extortion,” the complaint states of his life in his native country.
Abrego Garcia later married a U.S. citizen and worked in construction to support her, their son and her two children from a previous relationship.
The allegations about his affiliation with MS-13 stem from a 2019 arrest outside a Maryland Home Depot store, where he and other young men were looking for work, according to the complaint.
County police asked if he was a gang member and demanded information about other gang members. After explaining that he wasn't a gang member and had no information, he was turned over to ICE.
ICE argued against Abrego Garcia's release at a subsequent immigration court hearing because local police had “verified” his gang membership, the complaint said. The evidence they cited included his wearing of a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie and a confidential informant's claim that Abrego Garcia belonged to MS-13's “Westerns clique” in Long Island, New York, despite having never lived there.
Abrego Garcia filed for asylum, while his lawyer submitted a “voluminous evidentiary filing establishing his eligibility for protection and contesting the unfounded allegation of gang membership,” the complaint stated. In response, ICE cited the information previously provided by local police.
An immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia's asylum request in October 2019 but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador. He was released after ICE did not appeal.
Abrego Garcia's lawyers say “he has neither been convicted nor charged with any crime” and has fully complied with the conditions of his protected status, checking in with ICE yearly.
Abrego Garcia's lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said U.S. government lawyers had multiple opportunities to try legally to deport him, including appealing the judge's 2019 decision or deporting him elsewhere.
“There are lots of things they could have done,” Sandoval-Moshenberg told The Associated Press. “But each one of those is in a court and gives him the opportunity to defend himself. And they didn’t do any of them. They just put him on an airplane.”
ICE calls deportation ‘an oversight’
In its court filing on Monday, the Trump administration said ICE “was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador,” but still deported Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error.”
An ICE official called his deportation to El Salvador “an oversight” in a statement submitted to the court on Monday.
Robert Cerna, ICE’s acting field office director of enforcement and removal operations, wrote that it 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 administration argued against his return to the U.S., citing alleged gang ties and claiming that he is a danger to the community.
They also argued that the court lacks jurisdiction in the matter because Abrego Garcia is no longer in U.S. custody.
The administration wrote that Abrego Garcia's attorneys “do not argue that the United States can exercise its will over a foreign sovereign. The most they ask for is a court order that the United States entreat — or even cajole — a close ally.”
In response to criticism, Vance posted a screenshot of court documents related to Abrego Garcia's 2019 bond proceeding on the social platform X and wrote that “it’s gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize."
Abrego Garcia’s removal comes as Trump follows up on campaign promises of mass deportations. Last month, he invoked the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, granting himself powers to summarily deport to a notorious El Salvador prison hundreds of Venezuelans who were deemed by U.S. authorities to be associated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Abrego Garcia was deported at the same time on March 15 but under the U.S.’s general immigration laws, not the wartime powers act, the White House said.
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Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia. Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana in Washington, Sarah Brumfield in Baltimore and Brian Witte in Prince George’s County, Maryland, contributed to this report.
