President Donald Trump said he doesn’t mind the idea of bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States to face the justice system.
While speaking to TIME magazine in a wide-ranging interview, Trump was asked about Abrego Garcia, a suspected MS-13 gangbanger, alleged wife-beater and illegal migrant the administration deported in March to El Salvador, where he remains in the country’s custody. Democrats, long opposed to Trump’s hardline immigration enforcement agenda, have vehemently demanded he be brought back to the U.S.
While the Trump administration has stood by the deportation, the president indicated he isn’t opposed to bringing the Salvadoran back.
“That’s not my determination,” Trump said to TIME, according to a transcript released Friday by the magazine.
“It’s something that, frankly, bringing him back and retrying him wouldn’t bother me, but I leave that up to my lawyer,” the president continued. “You could bring him back and retry him.”
Democrats have chosen to make Abrego Garcia’s repatriation a cause célèbre among their party. Maryland Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen visited El Salvador earlier in April and demanded a meeting with the alleged gangbanger. Four other House Democrats followed suit with their own pilgrimage to the country, and Illinois Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker announced he’s preparing state officials to boycott the Salvadoran government in protest.
Abrego Garcia was among more than 200 Salvadoran and Venezuelan nationals deported in March and sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison built by President Nayib Bukele to house his country’s gang population and other heinous criminals. While Democrats have largely opposed mass deportations in general, critics have zeroed in on the fact that federal prosecutors acknowledged Abrego Garcia’s repatriation was the result of a clerical error — he had received a withholding of removal order in 2019 which prohibited his deportation to El Salvador.
While sympathetic media and critics of the administration have repeatedly framed Abrego Garcia as a “Maryland man” and a well-to-do father, the White House has since released information which disputes that characterization.
Local law enforcement in Prince George’s County, Maryland arrested Abrego Garcia in March 2019, where he was observed hanging around other MS-13 members, according to documents released by the Department of Justice. Following his apprehension, a “past proven reliable source” informed the Prince George’s Police Department that Abrego Garcia himself was a member of the gang, and allegedly identified his nickname and rank within the gang.
An immigration judge in 2019 determined Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, denying his request for release from bond, according to court documents. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed this decision, claiming Abrego Garcia had not sufficiently disproved his gang affiliation.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in April released a domestic violence restraining order previously sought by Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, in 2021. Despite demanding his return to the U.S., Sura has a history of alleging violence against her spouse. She once claimed in court documents that her husband repeatedly became aggressive and hurt her during their marriage, and that he once “punched, scratched me on my left eye, leaving me bleeding.”
Abrego Garcia was suspected of human smuggling when pulled over by a Tennessee Highway patrol officer in December 2022 after the responding officer noticed he was allegedly driving eight passengers from Texas to Maryland with no luggage in the car. DHS confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that the vehicle Abrego Garcia was driving that day belonged to another individual who was convicted of smuggling illegal migrants in 2020.
“I believe that they made him look like a saint, and then we found out about him,” Trump said to TIME. “He wasn’t a saint. He was MS-13.”
“He was a wife beater and he had a lot of things that were very bad, you know, very, very bad,” Trump went on.
The Supreme Court has since ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. However, this order is complicated by the fact that Abrego Garcia — a Salvadoran citizen — is being held in the custody of El Salvador, a sovereign nation that is not beholden to the demands of a foreign court.
During a recent White House visit, Bukele said he has no plans to send Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.
“Of course, I’m not going to do it. I mean, the question is preposterous,” the Central American leader said.
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