Trump Promised Law and Order—Abrego Garcia Got Neither

He fled El Salvador to escape violent gangs—America sent him back to live with them.

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Let’s imagine a scenario:

You're a retired police officer. You and your wife own a restaurant. Your kids help out with the work. You're just trying to make ends meet, but the gangs in your area are getting really bad. First they try to extort you. Then, they threaten to kill your kids if you don't pay. Then they decide maybe they'll just make your oldest son into a gang member in lieu of payment. They won't take no for an answer.

So you send your oldest son far away.

Then, you scrape everything you have together and pay the gang off, hoping they’ll stop. You're a former cop, but they have threatened to kill the entire family if you report anything to the police, and you believe them. You also know from experience that the police are corrupt. There's no way anyone can guarantee any safety. The gangs run everything.

You move to a new neighborhood, hoping to find a better situation, but it all starts happening again. They are now threatening to rape and kill your two daughters and kill your youngest son. You keep your kids inside all the time, but none of you are safe. So you move AGAIN. But it's not enough. After four months of living in constant fear, you send your youngest son away too, to go live with his brother. Not just in another neighborhood, but another country.

But things get so bad, you have to take your wife and daughters and leave the country too. And yet, even there, they still come after you.

According to a 2019 immigration court decision, that's how Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia came to live in the US in 2012 at age 16, to live with his older brother in Maryland. His parents had moved with his sisters to Guatemala, but the gang trouble followed them there.

In 2019, after being arrested while looking for a day labor opportunity at a Maryland Home Depot, Abrego was slated for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Relying on gang information from local police, ICE claimed that a confidential informant had stated them that Abrego was a member of MS-13, a Latin American gang with paramilitary ties — and one President Trump recently designated as a terrorist organization. The informant had said Abrego was involved with an MS-13 chapter in New York — a state in which Abrego had never lived.

The basis of the accusation appears to have been utterly specious:

The GFIS explained that the only reason to believe Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was a gang member was 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. ... According to the Department of Justice and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, the “Westerns” clique operates in Brentwood, Long Island, in New York, a state that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia has never lived in.

To the contrary, all evidence points to the fact that he had come to the United States to get away from such gangs. According to the report cited in the quote above, the “uncross-examined detective’s accusation came from an unidentified informant who was also, perforce, uncross-examined—a second layer of hearsay.” Further, the detective in question pled guilty to supplying case information on a different case to a prostitute, and was later suspended.

Sensing the walls closing in, despite his protestations of innocence, Abrego filed for Asylum and Withholding of Removal Status, the latter of which was granted on the grounds that he faced persecution and even death if he returned either to his native El Salvador or Guatemala, where his parents live.

When Withholding of Removal status is granted to a person in the United States, that person may continue to live and work indefinitely in the United States, provided they follow all the conditions of maintaining that status.

Which means that as of the immigration court ruling dated October 10, 2019, Abrego was lawfully present in the United States.

Remember that, because the idea that he is simply an illegal immigrant is exactly what is being claimed by many who support his deportation and incarceration.

Abrego was in the US with the full knowledge and consent and explicit permission of the US government.

He got a work permit from the Department of Homeland Security. He got a job working construction. He got married. He had three children, all of whom suffer a disability — two are autistic — one nonverbal — and another has epilepsy. His wife and children are all US Citizens.

And yet, on March 15, 2025, in violation of a clear court order issued nearly six years prior, Abrego was arrested by ICE, deported to El Salvador, and placed in the maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).

No hearing. No trial. No due process of any kind. The only explanation from the Trump Administration for his removal despite the protective order was that it was an “administrative error.”

And the Trump Administration, which I have supported in its campaign to deport illegal immigrants and secure the border, is entirely unapologetic, and making no effort to fix the problem.

It’s not even a confusing situation. There is no evidence that Abrego has committed any other crime than entering the US illegally as a 16 year-old refugee from gang violence. A situation he rectified by following America’s own prescribed legal process.

CECOT is considered one of the harshest and most secure prisons in the world, and has been accused multiple times by organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of engaging in violations of basic human rights, including everything from not allowing inmates legal representation or outside contact to outright torture.

It is a place designed to house the most hardened criminals. It is a showpiece in Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s extrajudicial campaign to keep violent gangs from terrorizing his country.

If you search YouTube for “CECOT,” you’ll get an endless stream of documentaries, featuring scenes of the most barbaric-looking inmates, covered in tattoos from head to toe, packed into overcrowded cells under the watch of military-style guards, with narrators running through the list of austere conditions. Limited food. No sheets or mattresses or showers. No way to see outside. It’s a dystopian scene that makes for compelling television, and you can tell that Bukele revels in the strongman image it confers to his presidency.

In February of 2025, the United States and El Salvador entered an agreement allowing America to deport non-citizens — including those alleged to be part of gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua — directly to CECOT. In payment, El Salvador would receive $6 million USD for up to 300 detainees.

Thus far, 270 individuals have been sent from the US to CECOT.

Abrego was one of them.

The Legal Fight Goes Nowhere

Following a preliminary injunction from a district court directing the administration to "facilitate and effectuate the return" of Abrego to the US by April 7, the government appealed. The Fourth Circuit Court denied the appeal.

On April 10, 2025, in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled Abrego’s removal to El Salvador to have been illegal, citing an admission by the Trump administration that it was the result of “administrative error.” The SCOTUS upheld the district court’s order compelling that administration to take steps to bring Abrego home.

In the decision, the Supreme Court states:

The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term “effectuate” in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.

In a scathing statement by Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, the Trump Administration was put on blast. It reads, in part:

The United States Government arrested Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia in Maryland and flew him to a “terrorism confinement center” in El Salvador, where he has been detained for 26 days and counting. To this day, the Government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it. The Government remains bound by an Immigration Judge’s 2019 order expressly prohibiting Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador because he faced a “clear probability of future persecution” there and “demonstrated that [El Salvador’s] authorities were and would be unable or unwilling to protect him.” App. to Application To Vacate Injunction 13a. The Government has not challenged the validity of that order.

Instead of hastening to correct its egregious error, the Government dismissed it as an “oversight.” Decl. of R. Cerna in No. 25–cv–951 (D Md., Mar. 31, 2025), ECF Doc. 11–3, p. 3. The Government now requests an order from this Court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law. The only argument the Government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong. See Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U. S. 426, 447, n. 16 (2004); cf. Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U. S. 723, 732 (2008). The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene. See Trump v. J. G. G., 604 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 8). That view refutes itself.

And to be honest, after the time I’ve spent researching this story, I share the sentiment.

But it gets worse.

On Monday, April 14, 2025, in a meeting between the presidents of the two countries, Bukele, when asked if he would return Abrego to the US, said:

Well, I'm [Inaudible] not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States, right? I mean, how can I smuggle -- how can I return him to the United States, like, I smuggle him into the United States, or what do I do? Of course, I'm not going to do it. It's like -- I mean, 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.

Asked about at least releasing him into El Salvador, Bukele replied:

Yeah, but I'm not releasing. I mean, we're not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere. And you want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world, no, that's not going to happen.

All over social media, people are saying that Bukele confirmed that Abrego is a terrorist. But there’s no indication anywhere that he was ever wanted for any crime, let alone terrorism, in El Salvador. It appears Bukele is merely referencing Trump’s designation of MS-13 as a terrorist organization, and assigning that label to Abrego as a matter of fact.

It isn’t.

Nevertheless, Trump and Bukele were in open agreement on this point, and then Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined in:

Trump: Well, they'd love to have a criminal released into our country.

Bukele: Yeah. I mean, there's a fascination --

Trump: They would love it.

Bukele: Yeah.

Trump: These are sick people. Marco, do you have something to say about?

Marco Rubio: Yeah. I mean, Stephen [Miller] outlined it. I don't understand what the confusion is. This individual is a citizen of El Salvador. He was illegally in the United States and was returned to his country. That's where you deport people, back to their country of origin, except for Venezuela that was refusing to take people back, or places like that.

Rubio: I can tell you this, Mr. President, the foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court. And no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States. It's that simple, end of story.

Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, referenced by Rubio, was unrelenting during an earlier part of the meeting:

[A]s [Attorney General] Pam [Bondi] mentioned, there's an illegal alien from El Salvador. So with respect to you, he's a citizen of El Salvador. So it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens, as a starting point. As to immigration courts found that he was a member of MS-13, when President Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization that meant that he was no longer eligible -- under federal law, which I'm sure you know.

You're very familiar with the INA, that he was no longer eligible for any form of immigration relief in the United States. So he had a deportation order that was valid, which meant that under our law, he's not even allowed to be present in the United States and had to be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation.

This issue was then, by a district court judge, completely inverted. And a district court judge tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here. That issue was raised to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed, nine-zero, unanimously, stating clearly that neither secretary of state nor the president could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador, who again, is a member of MS-13, which as I'm sure you understand, rapes little girls, murders women, murders children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world.

He also twisted the Supreme Court decision as a 9-0 win for the administration, focusing only on the impossible interpretation that it said “no district court has the power to compel the foreign policy function of the United States. As Pam said, the ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador's sole discretion was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time.”

I read the entire ruling. Miller’s take on it cannot be described as anything but the opposite of what it said.

What Now?

All evidence points to the fact that Abrego is an innocent man, who was in the country legally at the time of his deportation, and should be returned to his family.

The Supreme Court said that the executive branch needs to “effectuate” the return of Abrego, but they didn’t order it. They sent it back to the district court to handle.

Bukele has stated publicly that he will not release him.

Bukele, Trump, Miller, Rubio, et. al., have bulldozed over the 2019 Withholding From Removal order granted an immigration court, and are painting Abrego as an MS-13 member, a terrorist, and a rapist and murderer by insinuation.

Even if the Trump administration showed willingness to correct their own error, they have no real mechanism with which to do so. They can’t force Bukele, who prides himself on never letting anyone out of CECOT, to send Abrego home. He has stated that those imprisoned there “will never return to their communities.” There is no attempt to rehabilitate or reintegrate anyone at CECOT. They are in a cage until they die.

And Stephen Miller has stated clearly that if Abrego were sent back to the US, they’d simply deport him again. He clearly has no qualms over lying about Abrego’s legal status to maintain this status quo.

Outside of significant public pressure, or a kick back up the chain to the Supreme Court for a more forceful ruling, it appears that Abrego and his family are just out of luck.

For the majority of the country who agreed that illegal immigration was out of control and voted for Trump in large part so that the issue would be addressed, I think it’s safe to say many of us assumed the operation would be conducted legally and ethically, even if it would be an ugly process.

I do not make an example of this case merely to tug on heartstrings. What is being done is illegal, unethical, and immoral.

Abrego was not a citizen, because as a teenager fleeing violence, he did not seek (or likely even know how to seek) asylum.

But the immigration judge at Abrego’s 2019 hearing made clear that the inability to grant asylum was statutory because of time elapsed, not that it lacked grounds.

In fact, he said “The standard for withholding of removal is … more stringent than the standard for asylum.” Had Abrego known how to pursue this course of action at age 16 without his parents to guide him, he might well have been close to attaining his citizenship.

Instead, he is rotting in one of the worst prisons in the world in a country he fled because of the very people who are locked inside with him, for crimes he didn’t even commit.

Actually, for no crime at all.

We may have to take harsh measures to secure our borders and protect our sovereignty, but this is more than just a mistake. This is a man’s life. And while he languishes, he is villainized, his family is left alone to fend for themselves, and far too many of my compatriots are too eager to believe the administration’s lies about this case. They would rather attack anyone who points out the truth to them than confront the facts.

This is not the America of Trump’s promised Golden Age. This is something else. Something much worse. And those of us who have supported Trump should speak loudest against it.