President Donald Trump trolled his doubters by doubling down on an image allegedly showing the gang ties of the man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump republished an image showing tattoos on the knuckles of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly taken to an El Salvadoran mega-prison and accused by the government of having ties to the criminal gang MS-13.
The photo showed four symbols spread across Abrego Garcia’s knuckles: a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross, and a skull. Above each symbol were the characters “M,” “S,” “1,” and “3.”
“This is the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that the Courts are trying to save from being deported?” Trump wrote.
This is the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that the Courts are trying to save from being deported? He was supposed to be, according to the Judge and the Democrats, a wonderful father from Maryland, but then they noticed he had “MS-13” tattooed onto his knuckles (and lots of really… pic.twitter.com/FDQcFdATJS
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) April 21, 2025
Trump posted the photo for the first time over the weekend. Social media users accused the administration of photoshopping the image by adding the characters that spelled out MS-13 on top of the symbols. “Trump has posted a fake picture of Abrego Garcia’s hand where they have photoshopped letters spelling MS-13 on his upper knuckles,” wrote user @RachelBitecofer. “Here is the original. It’s spreading all over MAGA media.”
Other users argued it should have been obvious that the “MS-13” was put there to illustrate Trump’s claim about what the tattoo represented.
But the president seemed unbothered by the discourse, posting it again on Monday night.
“He was supposed to be, according to the Judge and the Democrats, a wonderful father from Maryland, but then they noticed he had ‘MS-13′ tattooed onto his knuckles (and lots of really bad stories about his past!),” Trump said on Monday. “This is the gang that is, perhaps, the worst of them all. What is wrong with our Country?”
The Trump administration has repeatedly accused Abrego Garcia of being an MS-13 member, citing images of him wearing Chicago Bulls merchandise, the tattoos on his knuckles, and a confidential informant’s claim that he belonged to the gang’s clique in New York—even though he’s never lived there.
The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit earlier called the evidence of Abrego Garcia’s alleged MS-13 links “thin, to say the least.”
That hasn’t stopped conservative pundits from echoing the government’s claims, despite the Trump administration’s own admission that it deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”
In a Monday episode of The Five, Fox News anchor Jesse Watters went off on Abrego Garcia and blasted calls to provide him with due process.
“You can’t break into the country and ignore the process of coming here and then want a process to leave,” Watters said. “You cannot cut the line to come here and then ask to be put in the line to go home.”
In an interview on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront, Abrego Garcia’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said there’s one thing the Trump administration can do to address concerns over his client’s alleged ties to MS-13.
“If the Trump administration is so confident that they’ve got this guy dead to rights, bring him back, put him on trial,” he said. “As soon as we start taking trials away from one immigrant, it’s a very, very short walk to taking trials away from you and me.”
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