A retired acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director said Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was deported to the terrorist confinement center (CECOT) in El Salvador, will be removed again if he is approved to return to the U.S.
“Let’s start where it is operationally, if he comes back to the United States, he’s going to be deported again,” Ron Vitiello, who served during President Trump’s first term, said during a Thursday evening appearance on NewsNation’s “The Hill.”
The Supreme Court and an appeals court supported a lower court ruling ordering the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release, but the White House says there’s no chance he will be brought back.
Vitiello described efforts by Democrats to get him returned to the U.S. as “grandstanding.”
Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele both said Monday they would not help Abrego Garcia get released. The administration acknowledged in court that his his removal was an “administrative error,” but it has since shifted its position.
“If the roles were reversed, if there was an American citizen in jail in the United States that did something in El Salvador that they were concerned about, if they asked us to send a native son of America, just because they asked us to, we wouldn’t do that either,” Vitiello said.
The White House has claimed the Maryland man has ties to the MS-13 gang and was a criminal, which Abrego Garcia and his wife deny.
An immigration judge granted him approval to stay in the U.S. after fleeing El Salvador due to violence and persecution. Abrego Garcia resided in Maryland for more than a decade before ICE deported him to his country of origin.
Tags deportation Donald Trump ICE Kilmar Abrego Garcia Nayib Bukele white house
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