How the Trump Administration Flipped on Kilmar Abrego Garcia

[Eugene]

Source: The Atlantic

How the Trump Administration Flipped on Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Nick Miroff
Fri, April 25, 2025 at 12:04 PM EDT 10 min read

At each stage in the political and legal fight over Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation, the Trump administration has pushed back harder and dug in deeper.

The administration first called Abrego Garcia’s deportation an “administrative error,” then a “clerical error.” The words trivialized the decision to send a man to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador without legal proceedings and in direct violation of a judge’s protective order. Officials insisted that the mistake could not be undone, disregarding a Supreme Court ruling instructing the administration to “facilitate” his return. Now the president and his advisers maintain, almost daily, that Abrego Garcia will never touch American soil again.

“He’s NOT coming back,” the White House has declared on social media, while repeatedly calling Abrego Garcia a dangerous criminal and a terrorist.

But in the days after the administration first discovered its mistake, instead of trying to foreclose Abrego Garcia’s return, officials looked for ways to bring him home. They puzzled over the fragmentary evidence tying him to gang membership. And they worried about his safety in a prison where he could be targeted for attack.

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-administration-flipped-kilmar-abrego-160400957.html

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The article goes on to say the the Trump administration saw Kilmar Abrego Garcia's detention as a political opportunity.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Trump lawyers had rescue plan for El Salvador prisoner -- and White House 'blew it up': report

Garcia should have been returned to the US a long time ago. trump and his senior DOJ assholes are using Garcia as a pawn to try to win a victory over the courts

Link to tweet

https://www.rawstory.com/kilmar-abrego-garcia-2671845380/

Career officials within the Trump adminstration had been trying behind the scenes to return wrongly-deported Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States after learning he had been sent to the infamous Salvadoran CECOT megaprison — but these efforts were shut down by White House officials early on, reported The Atlantic on Friday.

Garcia's removal has become a massive controversy and focal point of protest around President Donald Trump's mass deportation policy, as well as his defiance of court orders.

"A lawsuit filed by Abrego Garcia’s family sparked urgent conversations among attorneys at the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security who were involved in formulating the government’s response. Their discussion — which has not been previously reported — reflected serious concerns, at odds with the administration’s later statements, according to two people familiar with the conversations, as well as notes and memos I reviewed," reported Nick Miroff.

"These conversations show that U.S. officials initially sought to resolve Abrego Garcia’s case quietly and ensure his safety through the conventional diplomatic channels they’ve used in other cases involving a mistaken deportation. This time, though, their efforts were abruptly halted."

Multiple courts, including the Supreme Court, have ordered the Trump administration to take all steps possible to "facilitate" the return of Abrego Garcia, who had been under a protective order prohibiting his deportation to El Salvador for his own safety, as Barrio 18 gang members had threatened him in the past.

Attorneys at the Department of Homeland Security had been aware early on that the deportation violated that order, and had been trying to start the process to return him to the U.S. However, per the report, administration higher-ups "swiftly turned an admission of bureaucratic error into a political opportunity — a chance to flex executive authority and test the judicial branch’s ability to restrain presidential power. Abrego Garcia’s deportation became far more than just the case of one man; it developed into a measure of whether Donald Trump’s administration can send people — citizens or not — to foreign prisons without due process. All the while, Abrego Garcia has remained in detention in El Salvador, unable to communicate with his lawyers or his family."....

"Career officials inside the Trump admin first viewed the case of Mr. Abrego Garcia like any normal case of a wrongful deportation — they began looking for ways to bring him back, as happens whenever ICE makes that mistake.Then the White House got involved, and blew it up."

The Trump administration has also insisted in response to criticism that the United States has no authority to order El Salvador to return Abrego Garcia to this country, and even if he was returned they would simply deport him to a different country. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has been eagerly striking deals with Trump to imprison deportees, echoed his line.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. It appears that trump's attorneys are NOT keeping trump informed about the court rulings

The trump DOJ are lying about what the courts have ruled and have not been keeping trump informed about these rulings

Link to tweet

I was struck by this interaction in the Time interview. The relevant section in the Scotus decision is one paragraph. Any other pres in history would have read that. This is something we've never seen before: a president who doesn't read. He is a captive of his fawning advisors.