Featured Image Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Topics: Donald Trump, El Salvador, US News, Crime, Court, Politics
Liv Bridge
Topics: Donald Trump, El Salvador, US News, Crime, Court, Politics
Donald Trump has addressed the order that files for the release of a father who was deported to El Salvador's mega-jail in an 'admin error'.
More than 250 people accused of committing crimes in the US were deported to El Salvador's mega prison, the Center for Terrorism Confinement, that is notorious for housing mass murderers and gang criminals last month.
The CECOT is considered the largest prison in the Americas and can home up to 40,000 inmates.
The Trump administration signed off on the mass deportation order after accusing many of the migrants of being involved with the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, or M3-13 gang.
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However, Trump's team acknowledged it made an error in sending a Maryland father with protected legal status in the US to the jail.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who is a Salvadoran national, had been granted protected status by an immigration judge back in 2019, essentially prohibiting the federal government from sending him back to the country.
While the mistake has been admitted, the authorities are struggling to find a way to release him from Salvadorian custody and back into the US.
The Supreme Court then stepped in with an order to 'facilitate and effectuate’ his return on Thursday (April 10), where the Court made a 9-0 ruling, which declined to block the lower court's order to the administration.
It means Abrego Garcia will need to be released ‘to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent’.
Now, Trump has addressed the apparent hold-up in an interview with TIME.
The POTUS was asked if he was 'disobeying the Supreme Court' by failing to bring the man back.
The reporter said: "Let me quote from the ruling: 'The order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador.' Are you facilitating a release?"
Yet Trump bluntly responded: "I leave that to my lawyers. I give them no instructions. They feel that the order said something very much different from what you're saying. But I leave that to my lawyers."
"I don't make that decision," he added.
When asked if Trump had contacted El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to request Abrego Garcia's release, the POTUS doubled-down, stating he hadn't asked personally but that Bukele 'said he wouldn't'.
"Nobody asked me to ask him [Bukele] that question, except you," Trump said to the reporter.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys previously stated that the father had fled gang violence more than a decade ago, but an administrative error led to him being arrested by ICE in mid-March due to his alleged 'prominent role in MS-13,' according to a court declaration.
Addressing whether the Maryland man 'deserves his day in court,' Trump said he 'wasn't a saint' and has 'got quite a past'.
The US president went on to claim Abrego Garcia had MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles, adding: "This is no longer just a nice, wonderful man from Maryland, which people, which the fake news had me and other people for a period of time believing."
Still, Trump said bringing the man back to the US for a retrial wouldn't 'bother' him, but the situation falls on the shoulders of his legal team.