Border Czar Tom Homan Says US Justified in Deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador

‘The length of due process is not the same under the Alien Enemies Act.,’ he says.

White House border czar Tom Homan speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington on April 15, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

White House border czar Tom Homan said Sunday that the administration followed the law when it deported an illegal immigrant the government says is an MS-13 gang member, and who has become the subject of Democratic criticism of the Trump administration’s policies.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States from a Salvadoran prison. The White House has said that it can’t retrieve Abrego Garcia after deporting him to his home country despite a 2019 order preventing his deportation there. The Trump administration initially said it had made an “administrative error” in deporting him.

“We have followed the Constitution and we have followed the law,” Homan said on ABC’s “This Week“ in a Sunday interview. “The length of due process is not the same under the Alien Enemies Act.”

He added that the 1798 law, which President Donald Trump invoked earlier this year to target MS-13 and other criminal organizations that have also been designated as terrorist groups, was created for those reasons and that Trump has the authority to invoke it.

MS-13, Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and Mexican drug cartels were designated as foreign terrorist organizations around two months ago, before Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act.

“I’m not arguing over here that nobody should get due process,” Homan said. “I am just saying there is a different process under the Alien Enemies Act.”

Abrego Garcia has been put in the media spotlight amid the administration’s deportation of violent criminals. A judge previously found that he was a member of the MS-13 gang, while the administration recently released a report that said he was involved in human trafficking.

The Trump administration deported him back to El Salvador last month and maintaining he was in MS-13.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleged Abrego Garcia was a gang member based on county police information, according to his immigration case. The information was enough for an immigration judge in April 2019 to keep Abrego Garcia in jail as his case continued, the records show. The judge said the informant was proven and reliable and had verified his gang membership.

Abrego Garcia appealed the judge’s decision to keep him in jail, but that was later denied, records show. Abrego Garcia has denied he is an MS-13 member and his attorneys say he was never charged with a crime.

A report released by the DHS late last week suggested that Abrego Garcia was suspected of being involved in human trafficking. That report said he was stopped in 2022 by he Tennessee Highway Patrol for speeding before an officer found “eight other individuals in the vehicle” who had no luggage, with the officer suspecting it was a human trafficking incident.

“Additionally, all the passengers gave the same home address as the subject’s home address. During the interview, Abrego Garcia pretended to speak less English than he was capable of and attempted to put the encountering officer off-track by responding to questions with questions,” DHS said.

Over the weekend, Trump posted an image on Truth Social of himself holding a photo of MS-13 tattoos on knuckles he said belong to Abrego Garcia. “I was elected to take bad people out of the United States, among other things. I must be allowed to do my job,” Trump wrote.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.