President Donald Trump has said he “could” bring back a man he had deported to El Salvador – but he “won’t”. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran, was living with his American wife in Maryland when Trump had him sent to a high-security jail in the country.
Trump was pictured the Oval Office, holding up a picture of the hand of Mr Garcia, accidentally deported to a Salvadoran torture prison, and have thus far refused to bring back despite the Supreme Court telling them they had to. Trump’s administration claims Kilmar is a member of the MS-13 Mexican street gang.
The cartel is known for dishing out extreme violence to achieve its objectives, meaning he should not be allowed to remain in the country. The White House first confessed there had been an error in Kilmar’s deportation, but then claimed the US is powerless because he’s now in El Salvador.
But defiant Republicans are doubling down, saying they should not have to repatriate Kilmar after the Supreme Court said they must work to bring him back to his home in the US.
On Tuesday, Trump flippantly told ABC News he could give El Salvador’s president a call using the Oval Office telephone and ask for him to be returned. “I could”, Trump said. “And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that. But he is not.”
Trump suggested that White House lawyers were running the show, saying that it was their decision and that they didn’t want to help bring him back.
At one point, the President pointed to an image of Kilmar that he claimed showed him with gang tattoos on his knuckles. The image has been challenged, with critics saying it has been digitally altered, adding an MS-13 tattoo that he doesn’t actually have.
“You’ll pick out one man, but even the man that you picked out, he said he wasn’t a member of a gang, and then they looked and on his knuckles he had MS-13,” Trump said.
The 29-year-old, who lived in the US for roughly 14 years, during which he worked construction, got married and raised three children with disabilities, according to court records.
He was removed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month despite an immigration judge’s 2019 ruling that shielded him from deportation to his native El Salvador, where he likely faced persecution by local gangs.
Trump administration officials said he was deported based on a 2019 accusation from Maryland police he was an MS-13 gang member. Abrego Garcia denied the allegation and was never charged with a crime, his attorneys said.
The Trump administration later described the deportation as “an administrative error” but insisted he was in MS-13, an international criminal gang originally set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Angeles area.
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