(Hill) – The Trump administration admitted late Monday that it accidentally deported a Salvadoran man who was protected from removal and sent him to an establishment in El Salvador, claiming that they could not secure his return.
The filing comes in an incident filed by the family of Kilmer Abrego Garcia after his wife confirmed him in footage of a group of immigrants sent to Salvador prisons by the Trump administration.
“Ice knew of protection from removal in El Salvador, but Abrego Garcia was taken away by El Salvador due to administrative error,” the Justice Department wrote in a court filing.
The submission said they do not believe they can secure Abrego Garcia’s return from the El Salvador terrorist confinement centre, also known as CECOT.
“The United States is not custody of Abrego Garcia. They acknowledge that in this case there may be “hard reinsurance questions,” reflecting the perception that the defendant has no “power to produce” El Salvador’s Cecot Abrego Garcia,” Doj wrote.
“What they are looking for is a court order that pleads for close allies in the US in their fight against cross-border cartels.”
Abrego Garcia applied for asylum in 2019, allowing him to be protected by an immigration judge and banned him from being taken away.
But he was nonetheless among the roughly 260 men the Trump administration sent to El Sarador, claiming they were gang members.
The majority of those removed were Venezuelans, who are said to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang, but a small number of Salvadoran citizens were deported amid accusations of being members of the MS-13 gang.
The filing bares the risks associated with the removal of immigrants’ migration to El Salvador by the Trump administration.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers deny that they have any ties to the gang.
“He is accused of gang affiliation in general, but the US government has never produced any IOTA evidence in support of this unfounded accusation,” they wrote in their first submission, noting that he left El Salvador to escape gang violence.
They claim that he was “sent to El Salvador knowing that he would soon be imprisoned and tortured in the country’s most notorious prison.
Abrego Garcia is married to a US citizen and is the father of a “child of a disabled American citizen.”
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