by Donna on April 3, 2025 10:48 am
olde dude - Trump said that Abrego Garcia's deportation was in error, but that he can't do anything about it.
From Newsweek:
Abrego Garcia was born in July 1995, in the Los Nogales neighborhood of San Salvador, El Salvador's capital, according to a court filing from 2019 seen by Newsweek. His mother ran a business selling pupusas, a traditional Salvadoran dish of griddled flatbread, with the family all helping out.
He testified then that when the Barrio 18 gang realized the business was making money, it tried to extort his mother Cecilia with rent demands. If she couldn't pay, the gang said, Abrego Garcia's older brother Cesar could join the gang instead. The family paid the money and hid the boy, eventually sending him to the U.S.
The gang turned their attention to Abrego Garcia, then around 12 years old, following him and continuing to make threats to the wider family. They eventually sent him to the U.S. as well in around 2011 or 2012. He allegedly crossed the border illegally.
In 2016, he met his now wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura in the U.S. She had two children from a previous relationship, and the pair had a child together in August 2019. All three have special needs.
During his immigration hearing that year, the Salvadoran told the judge then that he feared returning to his home country because of the potential threat of persecution and torture. He applied for asylum, but that option is only available to those who have been in the U.S. around a year. By that point, he had been stateside for about seven years.
The judge agreed there was a significant threat posed to Abrego Garcia if he was returned home, and despite ordering his removal, barred ICE from sending the migrant back to El Salvador. He was then released from detention and frequently checked in with ICE.
"The judge found he was in MS-13 and then granted him protection from a rival gang," a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Newsweek Wednesday.
Abrego Garcia, his wife, and attorneys all deny he has ties to the gang, with a March 24 filing from the lawyers stating that "the U.S. government has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation"...
His attorneys claimed, and ICE later confirmed, that the only verification came from a form filled out by the Prince George County Police Department, which based his membership on the fact that "he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique" – a group based out of Long Island, New York...
"Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador," Robert L. Cena, acting field office director for Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) in Harlingen, wrote in a sworn statement, in which he added: "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."
Cena said that ICE was aware of the 2019 order barring Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador — it was on internal paperwork. On March 15, as other illegal immigrants were struck off the flights' manifest "for various reasons", Abrego Garcia moved up the list, Cena said. That list did not include the note, which appears to be the genesis of the "administrative error."
Attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a response Wednesday that this was "an outrageous set of facts," and demanded the court seek to fix the error.
newsweek.com
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