White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted during a Fox News appearance Monday morning that the Trump administration didn’t make a mistake when they deported Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Both the Department of Justice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have acknowledged that Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”
However, Leavitt pushed back on that notion on Monday, saying, “We did not make a mistake. We have always maintained this was an individual who needed to be deported from our country.”
“The president swore to the American public he was going to deport illegal criminals, and especially those who have been involved in violent gangs like MS-13 that have terrorized American communities,” she added.
Abrego Garcia, who was born in El Salvador, was deported and imprisoned at a megaprison last month. Administration officials said in a court filing that the deportation was due to an “administrative error.” Abrego Garcia had been granted protected status in the U.S.
This meant that a judge could order that he be deported, but the U.S. could not send him to El Salvador because of safety concerns.
The attorney at the Department of Justice who acknowledged the error was subsequently let go. Last week, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said, “The only mistake that was made is a lawyer put an incorrect line in a legal filing that since has been relieved of duty.”
However, ICE has also stated that the deportation was an “error.”
The case gained new attention following the visit to El Salvador by Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who met with Abrego Garcia, who said he had been moved out of the megaprison to a different facility.
Leavitt has said on numerous occasions that Abrego Garcia will not be coming back to the U.S., even as Democratic lawmakers have called for his return and court orders have stated that he must be brought back, including by the Supreme Court which orderd the White House to “facilitate” his return. Leavitt has claimed that Abrego Garcia was part of MS-13 despite little evidence to back it up.
“To the Democrat Party who thinks they are going to bring this foreign terrorist back to the United States of America to live a peaceful and happy life, that is never going to happen,” she told Fox News.
Leavitt called Abrego Garcia an “illegal alien” and a “foreign terrorist,” adding that he’s a “criminal MS-13 gang member who violated our country’s laws by coming here in the first place.”
She also called out Van Hollen “and entire Democrat party who wasted Easter Sunday going on every television show in the country to advocate for the return of an illegal criminal gang member.”
“There is a litany of evidence proving this individual’s ties to MS-13, that has been confirmed in two different courts,” she claimed. “There have been multiple law enforcement officers who have affirmed his MS-13 affiliation and that is who the Democratic Party is advocating for. It is ridiculous.”
Four House Democrats, Reps. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, Maxine Dexter of Oregon, Maxwell Frost of Florida, and Robert Garcia of California traveled to El Salvador on Sunday to advocate for Abrego Garcia.
“To see the Trump administration so blatantly and egregiously defy the Supreme Court and have no regard for due process is extremely alarming to me,” Ansari told the Associated Press. “Even with all of the illegal actions we’ve seen over the last couple of months, I think this is the one that terrifies me the most when it comes to the future of our democracy.”
