White House, DHS offer new justifications for deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, MS-13 gang suspect

Trump officials are sharing new reasons for deporting MS-13 suspect Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, saying his initial claims blocking his deportation in 2019 were “fake” and revealing new details of a human smuggling allegation.

Mr. Abrego Garcia was stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol in 2022, while he was already facing a deportation order, with eight people in his vehicle, Homeland Security said. He said he was driving them from Texas to Maryland but they had no luggage and all gave Mr. Abrego Garcia’s address as their own homes.

The trooper let Mr. Abrego Garcia go with a warning for driving under an expired license.

Meanwhile at the White House, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller questioned Mr. Abrego Garcia’s initial claims that he had been threatened in El Salvador by a gang and feared for his life if he was sent back there.

Mr. Miller said the story was “fake” but even if it was real, the gang — Barrio 18 or 18th Street — no longer exists in El Salvador, undercutting the blockade on deporting Mr. Abrego Garcia to that country.

President Trump highlighted the smuggling story at the White House Friday, along with new details this week that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife accused him of being violent when she sought a domestic violence protection order against him in 2021.

“This is the man that the Democrats are wanting us to fly back from El Salvador,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Abrego Garcia was an illegal immigrant to the U.S. whom an immigration judge found likely to have been a member of MS-13. Another immigration judge ordered him deported, but also found that because he claimed to have been threatened by Barrio 18 when he had previously lived in El Salvador, he could not be sent back to that specific country.

On March 15, he was deported to El Salvador anyway and turned over to that country’s government, which put him in its terrorist prison.

Now a U.S. federal judge has ordered the government to “facilitate” his release from El Salvador and return to the U.S., where his deportation could be reargued.

The White House initially called Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador an administrative mistake, given the immigration judge’s block. But officials have since offered a number of justifications for why it may have been okay.

Among them were that the U.S. had assurances he wouldn’t be tortured or persecuted, and that since MS-13 has now been declared a terrorist organization, the judge’s 2019 order granting “withholding of removal” to El Salvador isn’t valid.

Mr. Miller called that a “fake pretext” but said even if true at the time, it’s no longer a factor.

“The gang that the deported individual claims, or claimed previously that he was going to be persecuted by in El Salvador no longer exists in El Salvador,” Mr. Miller said.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing the current case, has rejected the government’s claim that Mr. Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member, saying that evidence hasn’t been presented in her courtroom.

A federal appeals court has largely backed Judge Xinis, saying it can’t say whether Mr. Abrego Garcia was a gang member but whatever the reality, the government committed a “shocking” abuse of its powers by ousting him to a country where an immigration judge had forbidden it.

Judge Harvie Wilkinson, a 40-year veteran of the 4th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, said if it can happen to Mr. Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration can do it to Americans themselves — including an administration’s “political enemies.”