DHS Says It Would Deport Man Mistakenly Sent to El Salvador If He Returns to US

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who lived in Maryland with his U.S. citizen wife and children, was deported to his native country in March.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a file photo. Abrego Garcia Family/Handout via Reuters

If Kilmar Abrego Garcia is able to return to the United States, U.S. officials would deport him to El Salvador again or another country, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official said on April 15.

If Garcia makes it to a port of entry, “he would become subject to detention by DHS,” Joseph N. Mazzara, acting general counsel for DHS, wrote in a court filing. “In that case, DHS would take him into custody in the United States and either remove him to a third country or terminate his withholding of removal because of his membership in MS-13, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and remove him to El Salvador.”

Garcia illegally entered the United States in 2011. An immigration judge later ordered him deported, finding that evidence showed he was a member of MS-13. A different judge issued a withholding of removal, due to the danger Garcia said he would be in if he went back to El Salvador.

U.S. officials deported Garcia to his native El Salvador in March. They said it was a mistake.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS, “was aware of this grant of withholding of removal at the time Abrego Garcia’s removal from the United States,” an official said in a previous court declaration.

But as Abrego Garcia was moved up to be on a plane of deportees, the manifest did not indicate he had the withholding of removal, the official said.

Lawyers for the man, who had been residing in Maryland with his U.S. citizen wife and children, sued in federal court for his return to the United States.

A federal judge ordered the U.S. government to effectuate and facilitate Garcia’s return to America. The Supreme Court said the government must facilitate the return, but told the judge to clarify what she meant by effectuate. The judge then removed the word effectuate in an updated order.

The judge recently told U.S. officials to provide daily updates on the case, including how they’ve been facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return.

Mazzara’s filing was the latest update. It said that Abrego Garcia “is being held in the sovereign, domestic custody of the independent nation of El Salvador” and that “DHS does not have the authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”

The filing came just ahead of a hearing in the case, due to take place in federal court in Maryland.

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele told reporters at the White House in Washington this week that El Salvador would not be releasing Abrego Garcia to the United States, or within El Salvador.