The Atlantic is on quite a roll lately. What that roll means depends on what side of the political spectrum you may be on, however.

Fresh off of “Signal-gate,” the outlet managed to dominate the news cycle with a Monday story from writer Nick Miroff titled “An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison.”

This, of course, sounds a bit like a Kafkaesque nightmare, as if some random dad in Maryland was popped by administrative authorities and sent down to CECOT, the Salvadorian facility used to hold many illegal aliens who have ties to gangs like Tren de Aragua and MS-13.

“The case appears to be the first time the Trump administration has admitted to errors when it sent three planeloads of Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador’s grim ‘Terrorism Confinement Center’ on March 15,” Miroff wrote in the piece. “Attorneys for several Venezuelan deportees have said that the Trump administration falsely labeled their clients as gang members because of their tattoos. Trump officials have disputed those claims.”

However, the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia seemed to be a different matter entirely, thanks to that whole “administrative error” line.

“On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” a court filing from the government read.

“On March 16, a news article contained a photograph of individuals entering intake at CECOT. Abrego Garcia’s wife identified one of the detainees depicted as her husband based on his tattoos and head scars.”

This puts Abrego Garcia in the center of a fight between President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who has prohibited further deportations of alleged gang members to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, has asked a court for his client’s return and, if they won’t comply, a cutoff of funds to El Salvador officials for hosting deportees from the United States.

“They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,’’ Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

“If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless — all of them — because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

Pretty much everyone — especially The Atlantic, but the rest of the media dutifully echoed Miroff’s headline — focused on the words “administrative error,” which (again) gives you visions of Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” where the charges, the crime, and any possible redress is foreclosed upon a person.

Jon Favreau, one of Barack Obama’s former speechwriters and so-called “pod bro” of “Pod Save America” and podcast network Crooked Media, asked the administration straight-up about this on X:

“You just admitted to accidentally sending an innocent father from Maryland to a torture dungeon in El Salvador. And you refuse to do anything about it,” Favreau wrote.

Any comment on this, @marcorubio? How about you, @JDVance? @elonmusk?

You just admitted to accidentally sending an innocent father from Maryland to a torture dungeon in El Salvador. And you refuse to do anything about it. https://t.co/TCykWFQH4Z

— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) April 1, 2025

Is this a factual summation of what’s being claimed in the court documents? Well, Vice President J.D. Vance took time out to respond by noting that the salient facts were buried deep in The Atlantic’s report but were pretty upfront in the court filing where the words “administrative error” started.

“My comment is that according to the court document you apparently didn’t read he was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here,” Vance responded.

“My further comment is that it’s gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize.”

My comment is that according to the court document you apparently didn’t read he was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here.

My further comment is that it’s gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize. https://t.co/cPnloeyXYk

— JD Vance (@JDVance) April 1, 2025

As mentioned, this is pretty far down in The Atlantic story, but it is there — peppered, as one might imagine, with quite a bit of slant:

Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a foreign terrorist organization.

Sandoval-Moshenberg said that those charges are false, and that the gang label stems from a 2019 incident when Abrego Garcia and three other men were detained in a Home Depot parking lot by a police detective in Prince George’s County, Maryland. During questioning, one of the men told officers that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, but the man offered no proof and police said they didn’t believe him, filings show. Police did not identify him as a gang member.

The court filing filled this out a bit: “Plaintiff Abrego Garcia is a citizen and native of El Salvador, and his coplaintiffs are his U.S. citizen wife and five-year-old child, who reside in Maryland,” the filing stated. “In March 2019, Abrego Garcia was served a notice to appear in removal proceedings, charging him as inadmissible as an ‘alien present in the United States without being admitted or paroled, or who arrives in the United States at any time or place other than as designated by the Attorney General.’ During a bond hearing, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (‘ICE’) stated that a confidential informant had advised that Abrego Garcia was an active member of the criminal gang MS-13.”

“Abrego Garcia then filed an I-589 application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture,” the filing noted. “Although Abrego Garcia was found removable, the immigration judge granted him withholding of removal to El Salvador in an order dated October 10, 2019.” [Emphasis ours.]

This is what the “administrative error” is about: not that Abrego Garcia is in the U.S. legally (he isn’t), that he hasn’t been found removable (he was), or that there weren’t grounds to remove him (the government’s case is that he’s an MS-13 member, although his lawyer contests this), but he wasn’t supposed to be deported to El Salvador under the prior regime in that country, and he’s now in prison there, albeit under a different regime. And, unlike what his lawyer said, this isn’t just some random stop back in 2019 being used against him; the evidence presented to the judge at that time was not insubstantial:

Kyle Cheney, a “legal affairs reporter” is apparently unable or unwilling to look at the facts here.

In 2019, an Immigration Judge (under the first Trump administration) determined that the deported man was, in fact, a member of the MS-13 gang. He also apparently had multiple… https://t.co/tEFd4AUqGY pic.twitter.com/i70r4leqkw

— JD Vance (@JDVance) April 1, 2025

“The heavy interest in the President’s primacy in foreign affairs outweigh the interests on the Plaintiffs’ side of the scale. Although the Defendants recognize the financial and emotional hardships to Abrego Garcia’s family … the public interest in not returning a member of a violent criminal gang to the United States outweighs those individual interests,” the court document stated. “And to the extent that the Plaintiffs assert a general public interest in not perpetuating unlawful agency action, they have made no showing that the removal of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was something other than an administrative error.”

Social media pundit @AGHamilton29, who often has lengthy takes on legal proceedings, summarized it thusly: “Essentially, he argued that despite his being here illegally and likely being a gang member based on the previous finding, he could be tortured if sent back to El Salvador. Such an order could still allow the government to deport him, but not to his home country, at least not without first contesting the order. He has been using that order since 2019 to avoid deportation.

“With that context, referring to him just as a ‘Maryland father’ obviously does not tell the full story. And The Atlantic reporter cites the lawyer to downplay the previous finding of MS-13 ties, which I view as an unreliable source.”

I just read the court filings to get the full context (which may not satisfy either side):

The man is an illegal migrant from El Salvador. In 2019, ICE presented sufficient evidence that he was a member of the MS-13 gang for an immigration judge to deny him bond and order his… https://t.co/Xb9VY39KG8

— AG (@AGHamilton29) April 1, 2025

“However, it also does not change that the Trump admin, emphasizing government incompetence, screwed up by deporting him to the country he wasn’t supposed to be deported to based on the 2019 order,” he added. “This highlights the need for checks in this program.”

Meanwhile, Article III Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain noted, “The more I read about The Atlantic ‘Maryland Father’ case the more ridiculous it gets. This guy crossed the southern border in 2011. He didn’t apply for asylum until 2019 — AFTER HE WAS DETAINED AT A HOME DEPOT.”

The more I read about The Atlantic “Maryland Father” case the more ridiculous it gets

This guy crossed the southern border in 2011. He didn’t apply for asylum until 2019 – AFTER HE WAS DETAINED AT A HOME DEPOT.

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) April 1, 2025

And, as Chamberlain noted in a later thread, Abrego Garcia only filed an asylum claim after the Board of Immigration Appeals found for the government regarding his removability:

Fast forward six months, with a new tactic. Instead of challenging the finding of removability, Abrego-Garcia filed a new claim for 1) asylum: 2) withholding of removal to El Salvador; and 3) protection under Article 3 of the Convention against Torture. pic.twitter.com/7aMFdbkjjJ

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) April 1, 2025

Furthermore, his stated reasons for not wanting removal to El Salvador have more to do with his family being threatened by a gang — something that probably shouldn’t be an issue for him, specifically, in detention:

And so, at this hearing applying for asylum, he testifies that he fears returning to El Salvador because the 18th Street Gang “was targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.” pic.twitter.com/4JaIiUlCZA

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) April 1, 2025

The point is that the “administrative error” here involves the manner in which he was deported and where he was deported to, not whether or not he was deportable. And, as for the reporting on the matter, describing him as a “Maryland father” is a bit like describing Che Guevara as an “Argentine physician”: technically true, if mostly misleading regarding why the individual is of interest. The facts remain that there’s not really a question as to whether Abrego Garcia is deportable, just where he should be deported to.

As to whether he should be in the United States of America or whether his speedy deportation is of interest to the U.S., the government has a convincing case on those counts based on prior evidence — evidence which was mostly overlooked by the media when it was running with this story.

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