Lawyers press Trump administration to return wrongfully deported immigrant after White House admits ‘clerical error’
Lawyers for a Salvadoran man who was wrongfully deported from the United States to a notorious prison in El Salvador will ask a judge to force Donald Trump’s administration to try to get him back.
Government attorneys admitted in a recent court filing that federal agents accidentally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, despite a judge’s order that blocked his removal. They called it “an administrative error.”
But, despite admitting the grave error, Trump administration officials have defended his removal, and argued that the case is no longer in their hands. Government attorneys argue that he shouldn’t be returned, and even if he could, the court lacks jurisdiction to order the Trump administration to do so — because he is no longer in the country.
Following news of the government’s admission in court filings, Vice President JD Vance falsely labeled Abrego Garcia a “convicted gang member.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt admitted there was a “clerical error” in his case, but claimed, without providing evidence, that Garcia was a “leader” of the MS-13 gang, and “involved in human trafficking.”
“They’re making these crazy allegations against him,” Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told The Independent on Tuesday. “There’s a place where they could’ve made those allegations [in court]. We would have responded to those full-throatedly. But they didn’t.”
Abrego Garcia fled death threats and extortion attempts in El Salvador and crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without legal permission in 2011 when he was 16 years old, according to court records. He has no criminal record in either the United States or El Salvador, according to his lawyers.
He has been living in Maryland with his wife and 5-year-old child, both U.S. citizens.
Following his arrest outside a Home Depot in 2019, one of the men arrested alongside him during questioning accused him of being a gang member, though officers at the time did not find the claim credible, according to court documents. Abrego Garcia was not charged with a crime, but he was moved to ICE custody for his removal from the country.
A judge ultimately blocked the government from deporting him to El Salvador under a form of humanitarian protection called “withholding of removal” after his credible testimony that he fears being threatened or killed by gang members in that country. Under that order, he is allowed to remain in the United States legally, and must attend regular check-ins with ICE. His most recent appearance was in January, according to court documents.
“They don’t deny any of the facts around that,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said of the government’s refusal to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.
“They don’t claim that they didn’t know about the order,” he told The Independent. “They don’t claim they’re sorry this thing happened and are taking reasonable steps to rectify.”
Meanwhile, his family is “waiting for any good news” from El Salvador, Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
His attorneys have labeled El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center a “torture center” supported by American tax dollars.
“This grotesque display of power without law is abhorrent to our entire system of justice, and must not be allowed to stand,” they wrote in court filings.
