Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the alleged MS-13 member who was deported by the Trump administration earlier this week, reportedly said he had no fear of being sent to an El Salvadoran prison.
Abrego Garcia entered the US illegally in 2011. A judge blocked his return to El Salvador in 2019, citing the fact that gangsters were after him, but said he could be deported elsewhere.
However, comments made to ICE agents that was not afraid as he boarded his flight back to his homeland, according to The New York Post’s sources, goes completely against that notion.
In court filings this week, the Trump administration said he was deported to El Salvador in error. The Supreme Court has since ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the US.
Late Thursday, a three-judge panel from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously refused to suspend a judge’s decision to order sworn testimony by Trump administration officials to determine if they complied with the court’s instruction to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
The Trump administration´s claims that it can’t do anything to free Garcia from an El Salvador prison or return him to the US ‘should be shocking to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear,’ the court said Thursday in a blistering order that ratchets up the escalating conflict between the government’s executive and judicial branches.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who was nominated by Republican President Ronald Reagan, said: ‘It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all.’
He added that he and his two colleagues ‘cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos.’
Kilmar Abrego Garcia (pictured), the alleged MS-13 member who was deported by the Trump administration earlier this week, reportedly said he had no fear of being sent to an El Salvadoran prison
In court filings this week, the Trump administration said he was deported to El Salvador in error. The Supreme Court has since ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the US
‘This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.’
The seven-page order amounts to an extraordinary condemnation of the administration´s position in Abrego Garcia´s case and also an ominous warning of the dangers of an escalating conflict between the judiciary and executive branches the court said threatens to ‘diminish both.’
It says the judiciary will be hurt by the ‘constant intimations of its illegitimacy’ while the executive branch ‘will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness.’
DailyMail.com has reached out to the White House for comment on the ruling. When asked by reporters Thursday afternoon if he believed Abrego Garcia was entitled to due process, Trump ducked the question.
‘I have to refer, again, to the lawyers,’ he said in the Oval Office. ‘I have to do what they ask me to do.’
The president added: ‘I had heard that there were a lot of things about a certain gentleman – perhaps it was that gentleman – that would make that case be a case that´s easily winnable on appeal. So we´ll just have to see. I´m gonna have to respond to the lawyers.’
Trump officials insist Garcia is not an innocent American, as claimed. They say he’s an MS-13 gangster who deserves to be sent back to El Salvador.
Additionally, a 2021 petition for protection from domestic violence filled out by Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez, which was obtained first by DailyMail.com, states that the alleged MS-13 member beat his wife multiple times over the years.
Trump officials insist Garcia is not an innocent American, as claimed. They say he’s an MS-13 gangster who deserves to be sent back to El Salvador. Many Democrats have furiously protested his deportation
Additionally, a 2021 petition for protection from domestic violence filled out by Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez (pictured), which was obtained first by DailyMail.com, states that the alleged MS-13 member beat his wife multiple times over the years
She told The Post she was ‘acting out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar … in case things escalated’ after being abused ‘in a previous relationship.’
‘Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling,’ she added.
‘Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect.’
Democrats, furious about his deportation, are up in arms, with Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen traveling in an attempt to get answers.
Abrego Garcia, who is a legal resident, arrived at the notorious supermax prison CECOT in El Salvador March 15 on one of three planes from the US.
He first entered the U.S. in 2011 but was granted permission to stay by a judge in 2019. He later settled down in Maryland and has an American wife and son.
The Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia on March 15 after files indicated that he had connections with MS-13, a vicious Salvadorian-American gang.
His wife and lawyer deny his gang affiliation and have sued the administration for improperly removing him from the U.S.
‘Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect,’ Vazquez said of her husband
The Trump administration initially said his removal was a mistake. The Supreme Court then ordered the facilitation of his return.
But the Trump administration is standing firm.
In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele led a united defense of their actions in the case of Abrego Garcia.
Bukele argued he couldn’t return, saying: ”How can I return him to the United States?
‘I smuggle him into the United States or what do I do? Of course, I’m not going to do it.
‘The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.’
Trump supported Bukele’s claim and went further, lobbying the El Salvadorian leader to take more migrants and build more prisons hold them.
‘I just asked the president, you know, it’s this massive complex that he built, a jail complex. I said, ‘Can you build some more of them, please?” Trump said.
Abrego Garcia (pictured), who is a legal resident, arrived at the notorious supermax prison CECOT in El Salvador March 15 on one of three planes from the US
Democratic Senator from Maryland Chris Van Hollen speaks to the press in Antiguo Cuscatlan, El Salvador. Van Hollen arrived in El Salvador to request the release of Abrego Garcia
He asked Bukele to take ‘as many as we can get out of our country that were allowed in here by incompetent Joe Biden, through open borders, open borders.’
The Justice Department, in its latest filing, argued the courts lack the ability to dictate steps that the White House should take in the matter of the return of Abrego Garcia.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who joined Trump and Bukele in their Oval Office meeting, said the decision was in El Salvador’s hands.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was also in the Oval Office, backed Bondi, saying the administration was not bound to follow court orders.
