Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller spewed “nonsense” during his Oval Office rant Monday, according to CNN’s leading fact checker.
Daniel Dale said Tuesday that there wasn’t much truth to Miller’s argument that Maryland father Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was sent to an El Salvador mega prison on purpose—given the fact that the Trump administration deemed it an “administrative error” three separate times.
The Supreme court ruled unanimously last week that the administration must “facilitate” Garcia’s return to the U.S., though Trump and his allies have been adamant that they will do no such thing.
During a separate appearance on Fox News Monday, Miller claimed that the administration had been undermined by a left-wing “saboteur” who made the claim that Garcia’s deportation had been a mistake.
“He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador. A DOJ lawyer, who has since been relieved of duty as saboteur, a Democrat, put into a filing incorrectly that this was a mistaken removal. It was not. This was the right person sent to the right place,” Stephen Miller appeared to say in the Oval Office Monday on Fox.
Dale fact-checked the administration’s contradictory statements on Tuesday, declaring Miller’s assertion “nonsense.”
“Mr. Miller suggestion that some lefty saboteur at DOJ is the reason people are calling this deportation a mistake is just wrong. Various Trump administration officials have also called it a mistake,” Dale said on Tuesday.
Garcia was under a 2019 court order that protected him from being sent to El Salvador, where he had a credible fear of facing persecution from gang violence.
Dale then explained that the DOJ attorney, whom Miller called a “Democratic plant,” chose to leave his post because he was frustrated with the administration over its handling of the case.
The lawyer confirmed that the deportations should not have happened.
“But he wasn’t going rogue in saying that—ICE and DOJ officials have told the courts at least three other times that sending Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was an error,” Dale added.
In fact, it seems like the current administration admitted its hand in the mistaken deportation numerous times, starting with acting ICE Field Office Director Robert Cerna telling the court under penalty of perjury that it was an “administrative error” in March.
Then in April, DOJ lawyers, including senior officials appointed by Trump, told an appeals court that he was sent to the country due to an “administrative error.”
The Solicitor General, John Sauer, a Trump-appointed lawyer who represents the administration at the Supreme Court, told justices: “The United States concedes that removal to El Salvador was an administrative error,” the New York Times reported.
“So, Mr. Miller, pinning the idea that this was an error on one sneaky Democratic plant at the Justice Department is nonsense,” Dale concluded.
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