The White House’s closest link to the white nationalist agenda had a full-blown meltdown Thursday over reports that the administration had been spurned by El Salvador over the requested release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a Salvadoran gulag.
During a White House press briefing, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed that Abrego Garcia had “extensively documented membership in MS-13” and was a “clear and present danger to the safety of the American people.”
Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally more than a decade ago but was allowed to remain in the U.S. and evade deportation back to El Salvador when an immigration judge ruled in October 2019 that a return to his home country could expose him to violence or persecution from a local gang, Barrio 18. Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime, and the only alleged tie between the construction worker and MS-13 stemmed from a 2019 report of a since-fired Maryland police officer.
Trump himself appears confused about Abrego Garcia’s connection to Latin American gangs. The president entered into a terse exchange with ABC News Tuesday night when he insisted that a doctored photo of supposed gang tattoos on Abrego Garcia’s knuckles was real. Experts say the photo is apparently photoshopped.
Trump administration officials acknowledged in court filings last month that Abrego Garcia’s forced exit from the country was an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court has ordered the executive branch to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.
“It is a sad reflection on the state of our media and many of the outlets represented in this room that you obsessively try to shill for this MS-13 terrorist,” Miller ranted Thursday, chastising American news outlets for allegedly failing to cover the supposed rape, torture, and murder of American citizens at the hands of “the illegals that Biden was importing into our country.”
Miller then scolded the Biden administration for abiding by the Constitution in providing due process to individuals that the deputy chief of staff derided as “Tren de Aragua terrorists,” referring to the Venezuelan gang.
The Trump administration has sworn that every man it had deported to the Salvadoran megaprison known as CECOT was a member of Tren de Aragua, but family members and friends of the deportees claimed that’s not true. Some of the men that had been forced to board the planes had no criminal record.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government is paying El Salvador some $20,000 per deportee to imprison the men. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has also insinuated he intends to make more money off the uncharged men: in March, Bukele posted plans to force the immigrants into labor camps under the country’s “Zero Idleness program.”
In April, a U.S. circuit judge purported that the Trump administration’s actions were wildly unprecedented and that the nation’s current use of a World War II–era policy—the Alien Enemies Act—to force immigrants out of the country while ignoring their due process rights had treated asylum-seekers worse than prior presidents treated actual German Nazis during World War II.
Miller previously served as the senior adviser for policy and White House director of speechwriting during Trump’s first term. The far-right politico has made a name for himself for his vicious anti-immigrant policies, which include proposals to build mass deportation camps and deploy the military and the National Guard to seal the border, promising a forthcoming reality of “large-scale raids” and “throughput facilities.”
He’s long been viewed as one of the most apparent and rigid ties between Trump and the white nationalist agenda. Miller, a mentee of Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, has had a profound impact on the president-elect’s language and policy on immigration, despite entering Trumpworld with little policy or legal expertise. He was the architect of Trump’s first Muslim travel ban and has been a vocal proponent of family separation at the U.S. border, as well as limiting citizenship for legal immigrants. During his time in Trump’s first term, leaked emails revealed that Miller promoted white nationalist articles and books, especially on the idea that nonwhite people are replacing white people.
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