President Trump and his deputies are digging in on their refusal to heed a Supreme Court order to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador last month despite another court order expressly forbidding him to be sent there.
The administration has shifted from admitting in court filings that the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, was deported because of an “administrative error,” to insisting that officials were right to send him and other migrants to a prison in El Salvador called CECOT, where detainees are cut off from the outside world and cannot meet with lawyers. Mr. Abrego Garcia has since been transferred to a different facility.
The president’s deputies have repeatedly accused Mr. Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang, which they have designated as a terrorist organization. On Friday, Mr. Trump held up a photo of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s tattooed hand in the Oval Office, arguing that the markings indicated he was a member of that gang.
The sentiment has been echoed by President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who visited Washington last week and said he would not return Mr. Abrego Garcia to the United States.
The Justice Department has argued that it can take a passive approach to the Supreme Court’s demand that the administration “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release, doing little more than letting him into the United States if he manages to present himself to a port of entry.
Yet Democrats and even some conservatives — including a highly esteemed federal appeals court judge — have criticized what they see as the Trump administration’s flouting a court order to reverse Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation as part of a pattern of the administration’s disregarding the rule of law.
Here is what to know about Mr. Abrego Garcia, the accusations against him and the facts of his case.
Mr. Abrego Garcia entered the United States illegally, but he was allowed to stay.
According to documents posted online by the Justice Department, Mr. Abrego Garcia said he entered the United States illegally in March 2012 through the U.S.-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. He was arrested in March 2019, while looking for work at a Home Depot in Maryland.
The Prince George’s County Police records of that arrest, from the same tranche of documents released by the administration, identified Mr. Abrego Garcia as a member of MS-13, citing his clothing, the fact that he was apprehended alongside a known MS-13 gang member and information about his role from a confidential source. Mr. Abrego Garcia challenged the determination about his gang standing, according to the documents, arguing that it was based on hearsay.
In October 2019, an immigration judge ruled that Mr. Abrego Garcia could not be deported back to El Salvador because he faced a credible fear of persecution from a different gang, Barrio 18. The judge allowed him to stay in the United States under a status called “withholding of removal,” and he obtained a work permit.
But despite the ruling, he was arrested again nearly six years later, on March 12, and accused of having ties to MS-13. He was sent to El Salvador three days later without a court hearing.
The Trump administration has also accused Mr. Abrego Garcia of human trafficking based on an episode in 2022 when he was pulled over by the highway patrol in Tennessee while driving eight people from Houston to Maryland. He was not charged with any infraction but was given a warning for driving with an expired license.
His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, has said he worked in construction at the time and often drove his co-workers from job to job.
Mr. Abrego Garcia is raising three children with Ms. Sura, two from her previous relationship.
In 2021, she filed a protective order against her husband, alleging domestic violence. In a statement last week, however, she said she did so “in case things escalated,” adding that they never did. She has publicly campaigned for her husband’s release.
Mr. Abrego Garcia has two brothers who are legal permanent residents, according to the documents released by the Justice Department.
Congressional Democrats have traveled to El Salvador to meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia.
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland met with Mr. Abrego Garcia in El Salvador last week, and came away with scathing criticism for the administration.
“If we deny the constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens the constitutional rights of everybody in America,” he said during a CNN appearance on Sunday, arguing that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been denied due process when he was deported so swiftly.
Mr. Van Hollen said in an interview that Mr. Abrego Garcia was being held in isolation and had been “traumatized” by his experience at CECOT prison.
On Monday, four House Democrats — Representatives Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, Maxine E. Dexter of Oregon, Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida and Robert Garcia of California — also traveled to El Salvador to try to pressure the Trump administration to return Mr. Abrego Garcia.
A top Trump adviser said Mr. Abrego Garcia had not been mistakenly deported.
On April 14, Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, abruptly changed the administration’s position on a critical fact in the case. He declared on Fox News and in the Oval Office that Mr. Abrego Garcia had not been wrongfully deported, blatantly contradicting other members of the administration.
“He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador,” Mr. Miller said, adding, “This was the right person sent to the right place.”
Until Mr. Miller’s contradictory assertions, the idea that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been deported in error was not in dispute. The view had already been advanced in court papers by D. John Sauer, the Trump administration’s solicitor general; Robert Cerna, the acting field office director for enforcement and removal operations at ICE; and Erez Reuveni, the Justice Department lawyer who was handling the case until the department fired him.
Even the Supreme Court, in its ruling in the case, took the position that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been “improperly” deported to El Salvador.
The Trump administration has pressed its case that Mr. Abrego belongs to MS-13
In the Oval Office on April 14, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that two courts — an immigration court and an appellate court — had “ruled” that Mr. Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13. But Ms. Bondi’s statement was misleading.
To be clear, Mr. Abrego Garcia has never been charged with — let alone convicted of — being a member of the gang. But during his deportation proceedings, some evidence was introduced that he belonged to MS-13, and judges decided it was enough to keep him in custody while the matter was resolved.
But other judges have found the same evidence to be lacking.
When Judge Paula Xinis, who has been overseeing the efforts to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States, considered the accusations that he was a gang member, she decided they were less than persuasive.
“The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived,” Judge Xinis wrote in an order this month.
Mr. Trump has personally joined the fray, holding up a photo of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s tattooed hands and arguing that they demonstrated he was a member of MS-13. The tattoos appear to be real, but some gang experts have questioned whether they are truly MS-13 symbols.
The judge in the case has ordered an inquiry into whether the White House violated the Supreme Court’s order.
After repeated obfuscations by the Justice Department, Judge Xinis took the unusual step of opening a high-stakes investigation into whether the Trump administration had acted in bad faith by not complying with the Supreme Court’s explicit instructions to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody.
Judge Xinis has allowed his lawyers to make 15 requests for documents to the administration and to take depositions from as many as six government officials.
The lawyers have asked the administration to provide them, among other things, with any documents showing the steps officials have taken or plan to take in seeking Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from El Salvador.
They have also asked for all documents about the agreement that the United States and Salvadoran governments have reached about housing migrants like Mr. Abrego Garcia in Salvadoran prisons, including any payments made to Salvadoran officials.
Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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