Trump administration issues statement after accidentally deporting father to 'world's worst prison' due to 'administrative error'
Donald Trump's government has confessed that a blunder occurred when a Maryland dad was dispatched to El Salvador's feared large-scale jail. More than 250 suspected lawbreakers have been sent to El Salvador's massive detention facility - the Center for Terrorism Confinement - which is infamous for holding Venezuelan gang affiliates and mass killers. The Center for Terrorism Confinement (also called CECOT) ranks as the biggest correctional facility in the Americas with capacity for 40,000 inmates.
Recently, the Trump leadership recognized their error, which resulted in a Maryland father with protected legal status being expelled to El Salvador. Though they've admitted this mistake, returning the man to the US presents difficulties, as officials claim they cannot bring him back because he remains in Salvadorian custody.
The legal case originates from a lawsuit concerning the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who received protected status from an immigration judge in 2019. This designation should have blocked the federal government from sending him back to his home country. Abrego Garcia's lawyers stated that he escaped gang violence in El Salvador over ten years ago.
The document, released Monday (March 31), stated: "On March 15, although Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) knew of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error."
Before his transfer to the prison, ICE arrested him in mid-March 'due to his significant role in MS-13,' according to a court statement from a high-ranking ICE official. His attorneys maintain that he has never belonged to or associated with the gang.
Robert Cerna, an acting ICE field office director, tried to clarify how the administrative mistake might have happened in his statement. He explained: "Abrego-Garcia was not on the initial manifest of the Title 8 flight to be removed to El Salvador. Rather, he was an alternate. As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight."
"The manifest did not indicate that Abrego-Garcia should not be removed. Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia's purported membership in MS-13."
