DOJ Says ‘Administrative Error’ Resulted in Deportation of Gang Member

The deportation took place on March 15.

Prisoners watch behind bars as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem accompanied by Minister of Justice and Public Security Gustavo Villatoro (R), tours the Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 26, 2025. Alex Brandon/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

The U.S. government deported an El Salvadoran illegal immigrant to El Salvador despite him having protection against removal, according to new court filings.

Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia, who was arrested on March 12 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations “due to his prominent role” in the notorious MS-13 transnational gang, was deported on March 15 to his home country, Robert Cerna II, an acting field office director for ICE, said on March 31 in one of the documents.

Abrego-Garcia was deported after President Donald Trump signed a proclamation declaring another gang, Tren de Aragua, had invaded the United States. The proclamation directed immigration officials to deport members of the gang.

Two planes carrying illegal immigrants removed under Trump’s proclamation took off earlier on March 15 but the third, which took off after a judge ordered the administration to halt deportations under the proclamation, only carried illegal immigrants who had been ordered removed by judges, U.S. authorities have said.

Abrego-Garcia illegally entered the United States around 2011 before settling in Maryland. Immigration officers in 2019 took him into custody.

An administrative judge determined that year that Abrego-Garcia was a member of MS-13 and denied his request for release, finding he posed a risk to the community. He was ordered deported later in 2019, but was also granted protection against removal to El Salvador because a different judge found Abrego-Garcia was likely to face danger if he were sent back there.

Federal law prohibits the deportation to their home countries of illegal immigrants who have been granted such protection.

ICE “was aware of this grant of withholding of removal at the time Abrego-Garcia’s removal from the United States,” Cerna said in the new declaration. Internal forms noted the protection.

Abrego-Garcia was not on the initial passenger list for the flight that took illegal immigrants from the United States to El Salvador on March 15, according to the official. He was listed as an alternate. But as others were removed from the flight for unspecified reasons, Abrego-Garcia “moved up the list and was assigned to the flight,” with the manifest not indicating that Abrego-Garcia had protection against deportation.

Abrego-Garcia was removed “because of an administrative error,” Department of Justice lawyers said in another filing.

The filings were lodged with federal court in Washington. They were in response to Abrego-Garcia asking the court to compel the U.S. government to request that the El Salvadoran government return him to U.S. custody.

“The government put Mr. Abrego Garcia on a plane to El Salvador, seemingly without any pretense of a legal basis whatsoever,” his lawyers told the court in a filing. “Once in El Salvador, that country’s government immediately placed Mr. Abrego Garcia into a torture center—one that the U.S. government is reportedly paying the government of El Salvador to operate. This grotesque display of power without law is abhorrent to our entire system of justice, and must not be allowed to stand.”

Abrego-Garcia’s lawyers say their client, who is now married to a U.S. citizen, is not a member of MS-13 or any other gang.

Administration officials said the motion should be denied because they do not have custody of Abrego-Garcia, meaning the court lacks jurisdiction.

“Because this Court has no power over a foreign sovereign and because Plaintiffs have not clearly shown that enjoining Defendants as Plaintiffs ask will likely redress their injuries, Plaintiffs lack standing for the relief they seek,” they wrote.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday that Abrego-Garcia “was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang.”

She added that intelligence showed that Abrego-Garcia was involved in human trafficking. “Foreign terrorists do not have legal protections in the United States of America anymore,” Leavitt said.

A lawyer representing Abrego-Garcia did not return a request for comment by publication time.