Stephen Miller lost it while discussing a senator’s planned visit to El Salvador to try to bring home the Maryland dad who was mistakenly deported.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen plans to fly to El Salvador on Wednesday to check on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has been held for more than a month at the country’s nightmarish CECOT mega prison. The Maryland Democrat also hopes to discuss Abrego Garcia’s release with government officials.
The Trump administration has admitted it deported Abrego Garcia over an “administrative error” but refuses to bring him home—even after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled the U.S. government must “facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.”
Miller, who serves as President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, has repeatedly claimed without presenting evidence that the administration doesn’t need to bring Van Hollen’s constituent home because he’s a member of the MS-13 gang.
“The simple reality is the police said he’s an MS-13 gang member. One immigration judge said he was an MS-13 gang member. ICE said he was MS-13 gang member. Another immigration judge said he was an MS-13 gang member,” Miller ranted to Fox News host Jesse Watters.
“And his president—who is not Donald Trump, who is [Nayib] Bukele—said he is, again, a confirmed MS-13 gang member. Everyone who knows anything about MS-13 has said that he’s a gang member,” he continued.
But just like saying the phrase “Bloody Mary” three times before a bathroom mirror doesn’t actually conjure the ghost of Bloody Mary, yelling “He’s an MS-13 gang member!” over and over again doesn’t magically summon evidence of gang membership.
Abrego Garcia had been subject to deportation hearings in 2019 after he was found to be in the country illegally. During the proceedings, a judge ordered he be held without bond because a confidential informant had told police he was a member of MS-13.
But the detective who originally classified his police interview as a gang interview was suspended soon after for giving confidential information to a sex worker. Nobody else from the gang unit stepped forward to answer questions about the case, according to court filings.
Although he had entered the country illegally, Abrego Garcia applied for asylum and was granted a “withholding of removal” order, a legal form of protection that says the government won’t deport someone to their home country if the person is “more likely than not” to face persecution there. He had fled El Salvador at age 16, saying a rival gang of MS-13 was threatening to kill him over his family’s papusa business.
Despite the protective order, he was mistakenly sent on March 15 to CECOT, a prison that it notorious for human rights abuses. Inmates sleep on bare metal racks and have to stay in their cells for 23.5 hours a day.
His wife and son—who are U.S. citizens—have sued the government to bring him home. Throughout the proceedings, lawyers for the Department of Justice have failed to present any evidence of gang affiliation, according to court filings.
Eventually, government lawyers “abandon[ed]” their earlier position that Abrego Garcia was “a danger to the community,” a federal appeals court found.
That hasn’t stopped Miller and other administration officials from repeatedly claiming in interviews that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, which Trump has now declared a foreign terrorist organization.
“We’ve honored the law and obeyed the law by getting him out of this country,” Miller told Watters. “The withholding order was invalid because he’s a foreign terrorist. He’s a member of a [foreign terrorist organization], which means there can’t be a withholding order.”
Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.
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