President Donald Trump on Saturday said that it wasn’t his decision to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, back to the U.S. to face federal charges, saying the “Department of Justice decided to do it that way, and that’s fine.”
“That wasn’t my decision,” Trump said of Abrego Garcia’s return in a phone call with NBC News on Saturday.
“It should be a very easy case” for federal prosecutors, the president added.
Trump added that he did not speak with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele about Abrego Garcia’s return, even though the two men spoke about Abrego Garcia during an April meeting in the Oval Office.
His remarks came after Abrego Garcia arrived back in the U.S. on Friday and was charged in an indictment alleging he transported people who were not legally in the country.
The indictment came amid a protracted legal battle over whether to bring him back from El Salvador that escalated all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Abrego Garcia’s family and lawyers have called him a family man, while Trump and his administration have alleged that he is a member of the gang MS-13.
The case drew national attention amid the Trump administration’s broader push for mass deportations.
After Abrego Garcia’s deportation, lawyers for the Trump administration said he was deported in an “administrative error,” as Abrego Garcia had previous legal protection from deportation to El Salvador.
Still, the Trump administration did not attempt to bring Abrego Garcia back, even as the Supreme Court ruled that it had to “facilitate” his return to the U.S.
Democrats, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., had for weeks said that Abrego Garcia was denied due process when he was detained and deported, arguing that he should have been allowed to defend himself from deportation before he was sent to El Salvador.
Trump on Saturday called Van Hollen, who went to visit Abrego Garcia in jail in El Salvador in April, a “loser” for defending the man’s right to due process.
“He’s a loser. The guy’s a loser. They’re going to lose because of that same thing. That’s not what people want to hear,” the president said about Van Hollen. “He’s trying to defend a man who’s got a horrible record of abuse, abuse of women in particular. No, he’s a total loser, this guy.”
On Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi alleged that Abrego Garcia “was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country.”
In a statement Friday, Abrego Garcia’s lawyer called Bondi’s move “an abuse of power, not justice.”
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