Summary:

The Trump administration accidentally sent a Salvadorian immigrant to a notorious Salvadorian prison and says it can’t do anything to get him back.

That’s even though the man had protected immigration status in the U.S., specifically barring him from being sent back to that country for fear of persecution.

On Monday, in a filing in Maryland federal court, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) admitted to mistakenly sending Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT prison.

“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,” the government wrote.

The admission came in a suit from Abrego Garcia’s family, who is seeking court orders barring the U.S. from paying El Salvador for the man’s detention and demanding that the federal government request the country return him to the United States.

The Trump administration argues that because the man is no longer in U.S. custody, a U.S. court lacks jurisdiction to issue orders regarding his detention and release. U.S. claims it can’t seek man’s freedom from notorious Salvadorian prison because it no longer has custody over him U.S. claims it can’t seek man’s freedom from notorious Salvadorian prison because it no longer has custody over him (AP)

Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. without inspection sometime around 2011 from El Salvador and settled in Maryland, fleeing from gangs in his home country who allegedly stalked, assaulted, and threatened to kill and kidnap him as part of extortion efforts, according to court documents.

In 2019, he was given a notice to appear in removal proceedings, where ICE accused him of being a member of the Salvadorian criminal gang MS-13.

His attorneys maintain he has no criminal record, ties to the gang, or relation to any criminal group. They claim the accusation rests on a flimsy gang arrest when he was targeted by police for little more than wearing Chicago Bulls-branded clothing while seeking work outside a Home Depot. (ICE maintains that a confidential informant told the agency the man was a member of MS-13.)

During the removal proceedings, Abrego Garcia applied for asylum and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and a judge granted him withholding from removal. The government did not appeal the decision.

The Maryland man, a union sheet metal working apprentice and father to a 5-year-old, remained in the U.S. and continued regular mandated check-ins with ICE, according to court documents, appearing most recently in January.

“Instead, the government put Mr. Abrego Garcia on a plane to El Salvador, seemingly without any pretense of a legal basis whatsoever,” his attorneys wrote in their suit, filed on Friday. “Once in El Salvador, that country’s government immediately placed Mr. Abrego Garcia into a torture center — one that the U.S. government is reportedly paying the government of El Salvador to operate. This grotesque display of power without law is abhorrent to our entire system of justice, and must not be allowed to stand.”