Donald Trump’s administration accidentally sent a Salvadoran immigrant to one of the country’s most infamous jails due to an "administrative error” — and they claim they cannot do anything to get him back.
The case involving the father, who was based in Maryland and had protected legal status, marks the first time the president’s team has admitted to deporting someone by mistake.
According to a filing on Monday to Maryland federal court, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) — a maximum security prison in Tecoluca dubbed a “tropical gulag” by human rights groups.
He was among three planeloads of Salvadoran and Venezuelan nationals who were alleged to be part of the notorious Tren de Aragua drug cartel.
But the deportees aboard these flights were given no hearings after being held in a staging facility in Texas and the Trump administration presented no evidence they were gang members.
Attorneys for some of the deportees said the government falsely labeled their clients as members based only on their tattoos, a claim that Mr Trump has denied.
The US Government wrote in Monday’s court filing: “On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error.”
Lawyers for Mr Trump said they have no jurisdiction to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States because he is now in Salvadoran custody.
But Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, has asked the court to order Mr Trump to return Abrego Garcia back to the US and withhold $6 million (£4.7 million) in payments to the Salvadorian government.
“They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,’’ Sandoval-Moshenberg told The Atlantic. “If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless — all of them — because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”
Abrego Garcia fled his native El Salvador as a 16-year-old due to the increasing threat of violence from gangs, court filings show.
He received protected legal status, known as “withholding of removal”, following a failed removal by ICE for unverified links to the MS-13 gang in 2019.
Abrego Garcia, who works as a sheet metal worker, has no criminal record and is married to a US citizen. The pair share a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a US citizen.
His legal team maintains he has no criminal record, ties to gangs, or relation to any criminal network.
The Department of Homeland Security and the White House have yet to comment.
