MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell is laying into President Donald Trump for mistakenly deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father of three who was sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador due to what the Justice Department has called “an administrative error.”
In a comprehensive segment during Tuesday’s edition of “The Last Word” that spanned nearly 20 minutes, O’Donnell condemned Trump for defying the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered the administration to help bring Garcia back to the United States.
The veteran broadcast journalist noted that Garcia had been in the U.S. since he was 16 and has never been convicted of “any crime, in any country.” He also said that a DOJ lawyer involved in the case had told the presiding judge the deportation was an “error.”
O’Donnell reminded viewers that this attorney has since been removed from the case.
“Judge Paula Xinis has been more than frustrated trying to get the Trump lawyers and the Trump Justice Department to do the minimally decent thing and the constitutional thing and correct their mistake and bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States,” he said Wednesday.
Xinis reportedly said in a Tuesday hearing that she wants “evidence” of the administration heeding her order, as “nothing has been done” in that regard. Her comment came one day after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said he has no intention of helping return Garcia.
Trump, who was hosting Bukele at the White House, agreeably looked on.
O’Donnell went on to note that the Trump attorneys added a statement to the record of the case before Tuesday’s hearing, in which they confirmed Garcia “would become subject to detention” by Homeland Security if he does eventually return to the U.S.
“So the Trump lawyers are now saying there is no point in trying to bring him back because if he’s brought back, we will immediately send him back to El Salvador because he is a member of MS-13, even though there isn’t the slightest bit of evidence that he’s a member of any gang,” said O’Donnell.
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Xinis herself has noted that the so-called evidence consists of “nothing more” than Garcia’s Chicago Bulls attire and an “uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s western clique in New York — a place he has never lived.”
O’Donnell argued that Trump is setting a dangerous precedent by defending his supposed authority to deport somebody who has never been convicted of a crime, or defending his inability to do anything about it, which would normalize deportations for innocent people.
“That simply means if he snatched an American citizen off the street and sent that American to a prison in El Salvador without that citizen having been convicted of a crime, that would be what the Trump lawyers call an ‘administrative error,’” said O’Donnell.
“And Donald Trump and his lawyers are saying in court that the ‘administrative error’ can never be fixed,” he continued, “because once they’ve sent someone to that El Salvador prison, there is nothing they can do to get that person out of that El Salvador prison.”
Watch O’Donnell’s full segment below: