Trump administration says it mistakenly deported Salvadoran migrant

The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing that it had wrongly deported an immigrant living in Maryland to a mega-prison in El Salvador despite a judge’s ruling prohibiting it, but said U.S. officials are unable to return the man to his family in the United States.

Officials deported Kilmar Abrego García, who is Salvadoran, on March 15 as part of a surprise airlift of purported gang members to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, where they were surrounded by armed soldiers and hooded police who shaved their heads and locked them inside high-walled cells. His removal came six years after an immigration judge found that Abrego García had testified credibly that he could be harmed or killed by gang members in that country.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers acknowledged in court records that they were aware of internal forms forbidding them from sending Abrego García to El Salvador and called his removal an “oversight.”

“On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego García was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the government wrote in court records.

Abrego García’s lawyers filed an emergency lawsuit last month saying there is no evidence that he’s a gang member and arguing that his removal was illegal. His lawyers urged a federal judge to order the U.S. government to negotiate with El Salvador for his release, saying he is at “imminent risk of death” and wants to return to his U.S. citizen wife, their son and his two stepchildren.

But the Justice Department, even as it acknowledged the mistake, said it could not use diplomacy or financial pressures to free Abrego García because it would threaten U.S. foreign policy and its relationship with an ally in the fight against gangs. Officials said they are powerless because he is in Salvadoran custody, and they downplayed the risks he faces in prison, saying Abrego García’s lawyers have “not clearly shown” that he would be tortured or killed.

Trump administration lawyers added that Abrego García’s lawsuit is moot because he is no longer in U.S. custody, and they attempted to cast doubt on reports that the U.S. government is paying El Salvador to detain Abrego García and others, saying that those were “allegations” based on a news article and that there was no evidence that any payment was made. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on social media on March 16 that “the United States will pay a very low fee” for his country to detain the deportees, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing on March 17 that the U.S. government would pay “approximately $6 million to El Salvador for the detention of these foreign terrorists.”

“I would point out that is pennies on the dollar in comparison to the cost of life and the cost it would impose on the American taxpayer to house these terrorists in maximum security prisons here in the United States of America,” she said.

The Trump administration’s admission of a mistake – and its refusal to attempt to correct it – comes amid accusations that federal officers are increasingly turning to inhumane and illegal tactics to fulfill the president’s campaign promises of carrying out the largest numbers of deportations in U.S. history. President Donald Trump has reopened family detention centers, held migrants in a former prison for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay and invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expel alleged gang members without a hearing, although his use of that wartime power is on hold as it is argued in court.

And on Monday, a federal judge ruled that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, after spreading discriminatory stereotypes about Venezuelans, had unlawfully threatened hundreds of thousands of immigrants with deportation to that country, despite U.S. recognition that it is a high-risk destination because of political repression and crime.

News of Abrego García being detained in El Salvador added to the broadening national debate over the U.S. government’s decision to send immigrants to be imprisoned in another country that has been criticized for human rights abuses.

Top White House and Homeland Security officials repeatedly alleged that Abrego García is a leader of the MS-13 gang, without providing evidence. Trump has declared the gang a foreign terrorist organization and said its members are subject to swift removal. Leavitt also claimed Abrego García was involved in human trafficking, again without proof, and said he “will not be returning to our country.”

Vice President JD Vance said on X that an immigration judge in 2019 had determined that Abrego García was a gang member. That was based on one confidential source who had been reliable in the past, though that was at a bond hearing before his case was fully litigated.

None of the officials provided intelligence reports or other proof of their allegations. The DHS cited national security concerns. But that infuriated Democrats and advocates who said the officials are spreading false claims about immigrants.

“He was not actually a gang banger. He was not a criminal. It was all a mistake,” Rep. Jamie Raskin , D-Maryland, said Tuesday at a congressional hearing. “This guy, who lives in my state, married to a U.S. citizen with citizen children, he’s stuck with the dictator of El Salvador.”

Abrego García is the son of a former police officer in El Salvador who came to the United States when he was 16 because a violent gang was trying to recruit him and extort money from his mother, who owned a family-run pupusa stand, according to court records. After multiple death threats from the gang, known as Barrio 18, he crossed the southern border illegally around 2011 and set off in search of a better life, court records show. He has no criminal record in the United States or El Salvador, his lawyers said in court records.

In March 2019, he and other young men were gathered at a Home Depot, seeking construction jobs, when police detained them for questioning, Abrego García’s lawyers said in court records. Police demanded information about other gang members, but Abrego García said he did not know anything – he wasn’t in a gang.

He was transferred into ICE custody and asked to be released on bond – which led to the judge’s decision that Vance and others in the Trump administration are citing to justify calling Abrego García a gang member.

ICE alleged that he was a gang member based on a “Gang Field Interview Sheet” from the Prince George’s County Police Department, according to immigration court records.

Baltimore immigration judge Elizabeth Kessler declined to release Abrego García on bond in May 2019 based on the gang allegations. She wrote that he was “confirmed to be a ranking member of the MS-13 gang by a proven and reliable source.” She also noted that he had failed to show up for traffic court violations.

She ordered him held pending a full hearing, which ultimately went before Judge David M. Jones, a former military judge appointed by the Trump administration that year to hear immigration cases and to serve as an assistant chief judge.

Jones ruled in Abrego García’s favor. In a written ruling, Jones found that Abrego García and his relatives credibly testified that gang members had been trying to extort money from his mother’s pupusa shop for years, threatening to kill them and trying to recruit Abrego García and his brother into the gang. The family moved three times to try to escape them.

“The court finds the Respondent credible,” the judge ruled.

He ordered Abrego García released in October 2019 and prohibited the U.S. government from sending him back to El Salvador, a humanitarian protection called “withholding of removal.”

The Trump administration did not appeal that decision.

Lucia Curiel, one of Abrego García’s attorneys, said the months in detention traumatized Abrego García. He missed his son’s birth while detained and checks in with ICE, as required, at least yearly. But he moved on. Abrego García is now a sheet metal apprentice and union member studying for his journeyman’s license at the University of Maryland.

On March 12 – six years after his first arrest – ICE officers stopped Abrego García’s car as he drove home from his mother’s house.

His 5-year-old son, who has been diagnosed with autism and is unable to speak, was in the back seat. Officers told Abrego García his immigration status had changed, handcuffed him and called his wife to rush to the scene to collect her son, court records show.

His wife said Abrego García “appeared confused, distraught, and crying” before officials took him away, according to the records.

“I’ve never had a case remotely like this, in which they intentionally deport someone to a country without any legal authorization to do so,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of his lawyers. “They sent him to the one out of 195 countries on Earth that they were legally prohibited from sending him to.”

Lawyers said to legally deport Abrego García to El Salvador, the government would have had to file paperwork with an immigration judge seeking to terminate his 2019 court-ordered protection. But they did not.

“This is a decision that they didn’t even appeal in 2019, which is pretty rare in one of these gang allegation cases,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “I don’t understand why they’re bringing this case back up.”

Nearly three weeks passed before the government admitted its error.

Abrego García’s wife, Jennifer, said in court records last month that it was frightening to defend her husband against allegations, despite the lack of evidence against him. When El Salvador released images of its new prisoners, she recognized her husband from his tattoos and scars on his shaved head, she said. She saw prison guards dragging him in videos, which Trump officials celebrated online.

“This has been a nightmare for my family,” she wrote. “My children need their father.”