The United States government has accidentally deported a man to El Salvador due to what legal papers filed on Monday described as an “administrative error.”
According to the documents, first reported on by The Atlantic, Kilmar Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. in 2011 from El Salvador and is a legal resident protected by a 2019 court order that prevented him from deportation to his home country.
However, in the documents filed Monday it was explained that “ on March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error.”
That administrative error has since landed Garcia in the notorious mega-jail, as he currently sits in legal limbo.
The report from The Atlantic details that Garcia was living in Maryland with his wife and 5-year-old child, who is autistic and intellectually disabled. The couple was both working full-time when ICE agents detained and deported Garcia, the filing notes.
Garcia’s deportation comes as the Trump administration continues to deport hundreds of people to El Salvador who are alleged to have gang affiliations. However, lawyers for those deported are claiming that their clients did not receive due process and were accused because of their tattoos, NBC News reported.
Those deported were sent to El Salvador’s maximum security “Terrorist Confinement Center,” known by its Spanish acronym, CECOT.
In the filing, Garcia, his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and their legal team are calling on Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to ensure his return to the U.S. and for the government to stop paying El Salvador to keep him in prison.
However, in its filing on Monday, the government claimed that U.S. courts don’t have jurisdiction to seek his release.
Citing an unidentified informant at a 2019 bond hearing, the government also alleged that Garcia was an “active member of the criminal gang MS-13.”
Garcia and his lawyers have denied the claim, saying the government “has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded allegation.” His lawyers also say that Garcia had left El Salvador to escape gang violence after his life was threatened.
Vice President JD Vance posted about the situation on X, wrongly saying Garcia was a “convicted MS-13 gang member.” Garcia has no criminal convictions in the U.S. or El Salvador, the lawsuit says.
Vance followed up his post, saying Garcia was “an illegal immigrant with no right to be in our country” despite the 2019 protection order.
“We disagree that he is an MS-13 gang member. The only basis of his gang membership was a confidential informant, there was never any hard and fast proof,” Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a statement to NBC News in response to Vance’s posts on X.
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“There is a judicial process. They could have gone back to the judge who, in 2019, gave him an order of protection and could have asked that judge to lift that order. They didn’t do that, they just put him on an airplane,” Sandoval-Moshenberg added.
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