President Donald Trump and White House adviser Stephen Miller appear unable to admit that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador with a reputation for torture, even though the Justice Department has already said the father of three was removed from the U.S. in error.
Miller appeared on Fox News on Monday, telling “America’s Newsroom” host Bill Hemmer he needed to “correct” the record.
“First, we won the Supreme Court case already, 9-0,” Miller said.
But the Supreme Court did not rule “9-0.” Instead, justices issued an unsigned opinion, without any dissents on the record, last week that said steps must be taken to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.
The Trump administration claims that Abrego Garcia is affiliated with the gang MS-13. However, Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal worker who is married to a U.S. citizen, is under an immigration court’s protective order, first issued in 2019, that kept him out of El Salvador. His attorneys said this was because he was fleeing gang violence. He has not been charged with any crimes in the U.S.
A “judge said unconscionably the president and his administration would have to go into El Salvador and extradite one of their own citizens,” Miller said Monday. “That would be kidnapping.”
“We would have to kidnap an El Salvador citizen against the will of his government and fly him back to America,” he added. “An unimaginable invasion of El Salvador.”
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered prosecutors on Friday to provide daily updates about Abrego Garcia’s status. On Saturday, the Justice Department filed one update alerting the judge that he was still “alive and secure” in the prison in El Salvador. Also on Saturday, prosecutors for the Trump administration told a federal judge the courts had “no authority” to tell the executive branch how it should conduct its foreign affairs or how it should “engage with a foreign sovereign.”
Miller insisted to Hemmer that Abrego Garcia was not “mistakenly sent to El Salvador.”
“This was the right person sent to the right place,” he said.
That comment contradicts what several officials, including the Justice Department’s own lawyers, have previously said.
“We concede he should not have been removed to El Salvador,” prosecutor Erez Reuveni said last month. Attorney General Pam Bondi put Reuveni on administrative leave shortly after he made the admission.
On Monday, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, met with Trump at the White House and suggested Abrego Garcia was a “terrorist.”
“How can I smuggle a terrorist in the United States?” Bukele said, before adding that he didn’t have “the power to return him” to America.
Trump smiled and nodded as Bukele spoke.
Trump did not indicate he had any intention of following the court’s directions to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Instead, Trump suggested he was open to the idea of sending U.S. citizens he deems violent criminals to the prison in El Salvador where Abrego Garcia appears to be being held.
Trump said Bondi was “studying the laws” with him.
“If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem,” he said. “Now we’re studying the laws. Pam is studying. If we can do that, that’s good. And I’m talking about violent people … really bad people. Every bit as bad as the ones coming in.”