White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the government’s stunning admission that ICE deported a migrant to a notorious El Salvadoran prison despite a judge’s standing order due to an ‘administrative error.’
Leavitt was about the incident Tuesday, hours after the government admitted the mistake in a court filing. She accused the deportee, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, of being involved in human trafficking and made plain he would not be getting any second chances.
‘The error that you are referring to was a clerical error. It was an administrative error. The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang,’ Leavitt said.
Then she raised a series of claims about the man, Maryland resident Kilmer Armado Abrego Garcia, whose wife spotted him in video clips posted by El Salvador’s president after the administration deported more than 200 alleged members of Venezuelan and Salvadoran gangs.
‘We also have credible intelligence proving that this individual was involved in human trafficking … This individual was a member – actually a leader – of the brutal MS-13 gang, which this president has designated as a foreign terrorist organization,’ she said.
She said the president maintained the authority and power ‘to deport these heinous individuals from American communities.’
Leavitt doubled down when asked about Vice President JD Vance calling Abrego Garcia a ‘convicted’ gang member and what evidence she had, although there is no U.S. conviction on the books.
‘There’s a lot of evidence, and the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have that evidence, and I saw it this morning,’ she said.
‘My further comment is that it’s gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize,’ wrote Vance.
The government did not furnish that evidence in its court filing, where it was opposing a motion to hold up $6 million in payments to El Salvador for accepting the prisoners, who the White House has repeatedly accused of membership in the violent gang.
Vance also tangled online with Politico reporter Kyle Cheney who disputed his claim of a ‘conviction. ‘The court filing does not say that,’ Cheney wrote. ‘It says he was denied bond in 2019 over an informant’s claim he was in MS-13. That’s not a conviction.’
Abrego Garcia was in the U.S. under a ‘holding of removal’ order by an immigration judge. According to a story in the Atlantic which Leavitt trashed, based on information from Garcia’s lawyer, he got the gang label in 2019 after being detained in a Home Depot parking lot with three other men in Prince George’s County, Maryland. One man told police he was a gang member but didn’t offer proof, and police did not identify him as being in MS-13 and didn’t charge him with a crime.
He got handed over to ICE, and the government subsequently ‘claimed that a reliable informant had identified him as a ranking member of MS-13,’ according to the report.
Leavitt said ‘we also have credible intelligence proving that this individual was involved in human trafficking.’
Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen who he shares a five-year-old child with, is suing the Trump Administration over his illegal removal from the US.
‘Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador,’ the legal paperwork filed by Trump’s team said.
‘This was an oversight, and the removal 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.’
Abrego-Garcia arrived at the notorious supermax prison CECOT in El Salvador March 15 on one of three planes from the US.
His removal also contradicts what the Trump White House originally said about the deportations to El Salvador– when officials claimed some 300 men who were on those planes were all Venezuelans who belong to the global criminal organization Tren de Argua or TdA.
However, Abrego-Garcia is a native of El Salvador, and his attorney has denied he belongs to MS-13, TdA or any other criminal group.
Abrego-Garcia’s lawyers are demanding he be returned to the US, however the Trump administration is outrageously claiming that since he isn’t in US custody, the court cannot order him to be returned to the US nor can the court order El Salvador to return him.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (C) tours the prison in El Salvador where Venezuelan migrants are being housed after being deported from the United States
‘Another “mistake” by the Trump administration—they’re deporting people they know should not be deported under law and then playing dumb about it. Due process would help prevent this,’ tweeted former Obama administration cabinet member Julian Castro Tuesday.
During Trump’s first term in office in 2019, Abrego-Garcia was flagged as a criminal by a confidential informant who “had advised that Abrego Garcia was an active member” of the gang MS-13, his lawyers told ABC News.
No evidence was ever presented proving he was a member of the gang, and he was allowed to file an application for asylum.
A judge went even further and granted Abrego-Garcia, whose photo has not been made public, withholding of removal to his home country.
According to his lawyers, ICE officials detained Abrego-Garcia in March, informing him that ‘immigration status had changed.’
He was taken to a detention center in Texas before being flown to El Salvador.
The legality on the Trump fights to El Salvador has been challenged in court, as Pres. Donald Trump invoked a law meant to be used during only times of war to suspend the legal process for Venezuelans accused of being TdA members.
That’s how the government was able to remove the men as quickly as they did, since they never had a day in court, and many of the Venezuelans removed now claim they are not TdA members.
Despite admitting wrong-doing, Vice President JD Vance doubled down, taking to X (formerly Twitter) to defend the action, and later editing posts.
‘In 2019, an Immigration Judge (under the first Trump administration) determined that the deported man was, in fact, a member of the MS-13 gang,’ Vance tweeted, although Abrego-Garcia’s lawyer maintain that he was never ruled a gangster.
‘He also apparently had multiple traffic violations for which he failed to appear in court,’ Vance continued.
‘A real winner. It is telling that the entire American media is going to run a propaganda operation today making you think an innocent “father of 3” was apprehended by a gulag.’
However, several judges have ruled that the flights to Venezuela violated the deportees rights, even if they are Venezuelan TdA members– neither of which Abrego-Garcia is.