Some Republicans say the Trump administration needs to provide answers about the “administrative error” that led to a man being wrongfully deported to an El Salvador prison — and possibly even get him back.
“I don’t have any problem with deporting him to a ‘safe third country,’ but I do think that we have a moral obligation to get him out of the prison and get him out of El Salvador,” Sen. Thom Tillis said. “I mean, we put him there.”
The Trump administration said it deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man living in Maryland, due to an error. A judge ruled in 2019 that Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador because he would likely become the target of gang violence, but last month he was sent to the country anyway as part of a deal to put deportees in an infamous prison there. The Trump administration says it can’t get him back.
Sen. James Lankford said he has questions for the administration about how it happened.
“We are trying to get information on the process on it, and what they did,” Lankford said. “We’re just asking the questions: Where are things going? What’s the gap? It’s a reasonable set of questions to be able to ask.”
Abrego Garcia’s case comes as the Trump administration has started to get some broader pushback on its deportations, specifically around questions of due process. Though the pushback seems small, it has expanded from beyond just the Democratic Party. In his latest podcast episode, Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024, expressed concern over the deportation of a makeup artist who was legally seeking asylum.
But the administration is barreling forward with its deportation efforts, and officials have said that once deportees are in El Salvador, there’s little they can do.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked a judge to order the administration to ask the Salvadoran government for Abrego Garcia back.
Maryland Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen, both Democrats, released a statement earlier this week demanding the administration “take immediate action to right this wrong.” Alsobrooks told NOTUS administration officials have made clear they have no intention to bring him back.
“It is absolutely abhorrent what this administration did, and to admit the error after it could not be reversed is unacceptable,” she said. “But again, we have a group of people now who are in place, who are incompetent, who are heartless and who ignore the rule of law.”
“These are humans,” she continued. “After all, these are not numbers. These are people.”
A DHS spokesperson told NOTUS that Abrego Garcia “is a member of the brutal MS-13 gang - we have intelligence reports that he is involved in human trafficking.” (His family disputes the claim that he is a gang member.)
“Whether he is in El Salvador or a detention facility in the U.S., he should be locked up,” the spokesperson said. “Remarkable that The Atlantic and other MSM continue to do the bidding of these vicious gangs and ignore their victims.”
Many Republican lawmakers have remained firmly on the side of the president. Some defended the mistake, saying that the media was latching on to an outlier, or pointed to the administration’s assertion that Abrego Garcia was a gang member.
Sen. Eric Schmitt said Trump and his team are committed to “doing it the right way.”
“I think actually deporting thousands of criminals who terrorized our country is the story,” Schmitt told NOTUS. “I’m sure there’s going to be an example here or there, and I think they’re committed to addressing those issues, but I think the play here is to try to over emphasize situations like that.”
Sen. Ted Cruz was likewise unconcerned.
“The Trump administration says he was involved in human trafficking and MS-13, one of the most vicious gangs on the face of the planet. If that is correct, no part of me is sad that he is gone, and I’d like every other human trafficker and MS-13 gang member to be gone as well,” Cruz said. “If you ask any normal person on the street, ‘Do you want murderers and violent gang members removed from America?’ The answer is yes.”
There were also few ideas about how such an incident could be prevented for the future, but Sen. Rick Scott, who said he’s “sure the Trump administration will try to do the right thing,” had one idea.
“Stop illegal immigration,” he said.
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
This story has been updated to include a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.