The Justice Department’s lawyers revealed in court on Monday that the government doesn’t just plan to whisk Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia off to an as-yet-unidentified nation. It’s also exploring how to send him right back to El Salvador.
The Trump administration is considering taking the peculiar step of attempting to reverse an immigration judge’s 2019 order barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting Abrego Garcia to his home country of El Salvador over concerns that he would face torture there because of gangs.
After months of Trump officials vowing he’d never return to the United States — despite orders from a trial judge, an appellate panel and even the Supreme Court — the U.S. government brought Abrego Garcia back from the infamous CECOT detention center in El Salvador in June and charged him with “human smuggling.”