Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that if Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was sent to a maximum security Salvadoran prison in error, ever returns to the United States, he will be immediately deported back to El Salvador.
“[Abrego Garcia] is not under our control. He is an El Salvador citizen. He is home there in his country,” Noem told CBS News. “If he were to be brought back to the United States of America, we would immediately deport him again.”
Abrego Garcia was sent to CECOT, a notorious prison, in March alongside hundreds of immigrants whom President Donald Trump’s administration has accused of being gang members. Administration officials admitted in court that Abrego Garcia was deported due to an administrative error. He has since been moved from CECOT to another detention facility in El Salvador, where he remains imprisoned.
The Trump administration has defied a court order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
“President Trump and his administration has [sic] adhered to the court and respects [sic] the court and its decisions,” Noem told CBS. “This individual is not under the United States of America’s jurisdiction and he is not one of our citizens. He is home in his home country. And that’s up to that country to decide what to do.”
Abrego Garcia was previously granted protection from deportation in 2019 after a judge ruled he would likely face persecution by local gangs in his birth country of El Salvador.
Since his deportation, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and his attorneys have been fighting for his return to the U.S. Vasquez Sura was forced to relocate to a safe house with the couple’s three kids after Noem’s Department of Homeland Security exposed her address by posting a protective order she filed against her husband in 2021.
Officials have tried to justify Abrego Garcia’s deportation by painting him as an MS-13 gang member. However, he has not been convicted of any crime, and his wife and lawyer both maintain he was not a member of the gang.
In an interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran on Tuesday, Trump defended his administration’s decision, citing an altered image of Abrego Garcia’s tattooed knuckles. The image was a photo of Abrego Garcia’s hand with the characters “MS13” superimposed above his real tattoos.
“He did not have the letter M, S, one, three,” Moran said.
“It says M, S, one, three,” Trump insisted, before complaining that Moran was “not being very nice” by correcting him.
When CBS asked Noem about deporting people without due process, she replied, “Obviously, we’re relying on the expertise of our investigators, our teams, double-checking, triple-checking, going through the paperwork, making sure that we have done everything absolutely correctly.”