Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a suspect in MS-13 and an illegal immigrant deported to El Salvador, will not return to the US, Bondi said.
Attorney General Pam Bondy said Wednesday that Kilmer Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration in March despite court orders protecting him – has not returned to the United States.
“He’s not back in our country. President Bukere said he wasn’t sending him back. That’s the end of the story,” Bondy told reporters at an April 16 press conference in Washington.
“If he wants to send him back, we’ll get him on the plane back,” Bondy said. “There was no situation for him to stay in this country. There was no one there.”
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant and member of the MS-13 gang from El Salvador, was arrested on March 12th and three days later for a deportation flight to El Salvador.
Before his deportation, Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland with his US citizen wife and children. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him the status of “withholding removal” after realising that he had faced a credible threat from his rival Barrio 18 gang if he was deported.
Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) says the removal of Garcia was a “administrative error,” recognising the protections of court orders and acknowledging that it was unable to properly flag it in its flight manifesto. Garcia remains detained in El Salvador in a facility that houses individuals accused of terrorism.
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At a press conference Wednesday, Bondy admitted the mistake and said that “additional steps to document” had been missed. She also said that deportation was ultimately justified.
“He’s from El Salvador. He’s in El Salvador, and that’s what the president plans to keep him,” she said.
Bondia said Garcia is a member of MS-13, a transnational criminal organization that has recently been designated as a foreign terrorist group by the US government.
“He would have come back and come back again with one extra step of paperwork,” Bondy said of what would happen if Garcia returned to the US.
Refusing a narrow reading of government duties, Xinis emphasized that “promoting” means “to assist, support, or facilitate” Garcia’s release, and that it would ensure that his case would be processed “if it was not sent inappropriately to El Salvador.”
