The White House reportedly shut down plans to return wrongfully deported Maryland dad Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. from an infamous El Salvador mega-prison.
Federal attorneys “began discussing how to undo the mistake” and return Garcia, 29, almost immediately after his March 15 deportation, The Atlantic reported on Friday. That included an idea to have the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador make a personal plea to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for Abrego Garcia’s release.
Attorneys at the Department of Homeland Security also discussed requesting that Abrego Garcia be separated from inmates associated with the Barrio 18 gang. Abrego Garcia said in his U.S. asylum case that members of the gang threatened him and his family in San Salvador, which is why he fled to the U.S. and entered illegally at 16.
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Plans to return Abrego Garcia—or ensure his safety behind bars—were made after officials realized an “administrative error” was the reason he was deported to his native nation, despite there being a years-old injunction barring his return to El Salvador.
Just as quickly as those plans were discussed, however, The Atlantic reports the White House swooped in to shut them down.
“White House officials took over the response and began striking a far more strident tone in their public statements,” wrote The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff. “They swiftly turned an admission of bureaucratic error into a political opportunity—a chance to flex executive authority and test the judicial branch’s ability to restrain presidential power.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday denied that there was ever an effort to return Abrego Garcia.
“The administration has always maintained the position that Abrego Garcia was the man we rightfully intended to deport because he is an illegal immigrant and MS-13 gang member,” she told The Atlantic.
Government attorneys reportedly realized their mistake days before Abrego Garcia’s family sued the Trump administration, transforming the sheet metal apprentice from an unknown dad of three into the face of the Trump administration’s battle with the judicial branch.
Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador, where he has no contact with his American wife or attorneys, despite a pair of court orders demanding that the Trump administration facilitate his return.
One of those orders came from the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously this month that the administration must make an effort to bring Abrego Garcia home. President Donald Trump and his acolytes have so far ignored such orders, claiming the issue is out of their hands now because Abrego Garcia is in the custody of El Salvador—a staunch U.S. ally whose president visited the White House on April 14. Trump and Leavitt have also remained adamant that Abrego Garcia is a “leader” in the MS-13 gang, despite releasing no evidence to back that claim up.
