Trump Administration Has No Plans to Return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US

The Trump Administration said Monday it lacked the authority to return migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US since he is no longer in US custody. Abrego Garcia, who lived in Maryland, was deported and sent to a prison in El Salvador during a wave of ICE arrests aimed at removing alleged foreign gang members from the United States. Abrego Garcia's attorneys previously filed a lawsuit requesting that El Salvador’s government return him to the US, honoring his withholding of removal status.

While the administration admitted his deportation was an administrative error, they recently released his criminal history. President Trump met with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Monday, where Bukele expressed no intention to return Abrego Garcia.

Voices across the political spectrum have come out in support of returning Abrego Garcia to the United States, with many claiming the refusal to return him is not only an oversight but a direct denial of the rule of law. A few voices on the right, though, argued that Abrego Garcia should not be returned.

The National Review (Right) published an opinion arguing, “Abrego Garcia is deportable, and should be deported, but a judge had ruled, in connection with 2019 proceedings over his time-barred asylum claim, that he couldn’t be sent to El Salvador. Sure enough, we sent him to El Salvador… This is an obvious injustice that could be easily remedied by bringing Abrego Garcia back.”

An article in Mother Jones (Left) read, “In Abrego Garcia’s case, we already see the government pluck a law-abiding father off the streets and claim without evidence that he is a ‘prominent’ gang member. Without a right to remedy the government’s actions, the same thing could happen to anyone else. If the government feels no compunction to even provide proof of the claim that Abrego Garcia is a gang member, what is protecting anyone else from the erroneous designation of criminal in order to facilitate their removal?”

A writer for Washington Times (Lean Right) wrote, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials acknowledged that an ‘oversight’ allowed Abrego Garcia to be removed in contravention of the order, but the slipup was the destination, not the deportation. As the prisoner’s attorneys acknowledged in a court filing last week, ‘The government could have chosen to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia to any other country on earth,’ just not to his home country.”

A writer for Vox (Left) argued, “Okay, so is this the judicial crisis we’ve been warned about? The administration says it is complying with the Supreme Court, even though the steps they’re taking, by Bukele’s admission, won’t result in Abrego Garcia’s release. But if the judiciary is going to serve as a check on Trump’s power, its rulings have to have the power to meaningfully change the administration’s behavior when judges say it’s breaking the law. Here, that’s not happening.”