Despite pressure from courts, Trump vows to keep Abrego Garcia from returning to U.S.
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- The series of images from Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s visit to El Salvador provided the White House with the split screen it was looking for in its argument that Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case is not a matter of personal liberty, but of immigration enforcement and national security.
- Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee, wrote that Van Hollen was ‘standing up not just for Kilmar Abrego Garcia but for every American who believes in due process.’
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is embracing its legal fight over the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man accused of gang membership who was deported to El Salvador last month, stating he is “not coming back” despite repeated judicial orders directing the administration to return him.
The case has fueled concern among Democrats and legal scholars that President Trump is increasingly willing to disregard U.S. courts. But the White House has leaned in further to the case in recent days, jumping on a messaging opportunity to pin Democrats as weak on immigration as popular opinion on deportations and the border shifts toward the right.
Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president and an ally to Trump, took part in that effort on Thursday when he allowed a Democratic senator, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, to meet with Abrego Garcia far from the confines of the maximum security prison where he is being held.
Cocktails were even served garnished with cherries and salted rims in photos of Abrego Garcia and Van Hollen that were released by Bukele’s office. But the festive drinks were not ordered by the table. Instead, they were delivered in the middle of their meeting by a Bukele aide. The El Salvadoran president then posted on social media that the comfort on display was evidence that Abrego Garcia was in good hands.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” Bukele wrote on X. “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”
The episode was the latest play in a messaging war over Abrego Garcia’s case that is unfolding outside of the U.S. court system, which remains insistent that the Trump administration work to facilitate his return to the United States. Bukele, in a subsequent post, suggested he viewed the crisis as a game, writing, “I love chess.”
A federal appeals court says it is ‘shocking’ that The Trump administration claims it can’t do anything to free Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison and return him to the U.S.
The series of images from Van Hollen’s visit also provided the White House with the split screen it was looking for in its argument that Abrego Garcia’s case is not a matter of personal liberty, but of immigration enforcement and national security — issues where President Trump’s policies remain popular with the American public.
Emphasizing the point, the White House posted another photo from the meeting contrasted with an image of Trump with the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland woman who was raped and killed by an undocumented migrant from El Salvador in a case unrelated to Abrego Garcia’s.
“Our messaging strategy is giving the American people the truth, the facts, which many in the media have refused to do and instead pushed a false story about an innocent,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, told The Times. “He is anything but that.”
Abrego Garcia has acknowledged in court filings that he entered the country illegally, and was found by two immigration courts to have likely ties to MS-13, a brutal gang that started in the Los Angeles area in the 1980s.
The first finding, issued by a judge in 2019, found that a confidential law enforcement source provided “sufficient” evidence to draw the conclusion he was a gang member, and noted that Abrego Garcia “failed to present evidence to rebut” the assertion. A second judge affirmed the initial ruling. But a third court put a hold on his deportation out of concern for his safety should he be sent into El Salvador’s prison system.
It is that third order that the Trump administration said it mistakenly ignored when deporting Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, back to his country. It is refusing to correct the error. Despite multiple subsequent orders directing the administration to “facilitate” his return, including from the Supreme Court, the White House said Thursday, “he’s NOT coming back.”
“This man is, according to certified statements that we get, is a very violent person,” Trump said Friday. “And they want this man to be brought back into our country where he can be free, and to stay as a happily — they call him the Maryland man. He’s a Maryland father. No. He’s a violent person.”
Democrats now find themselves in the politically precarious position of defending a basic constitutional predicate — that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States, regardless of their status, must be afforded due process — in the specific case of an individual whose record appears to show association with an unseemly past.
Public opinion on immigration has taken a sharp rightward turn in recent years, a phenomenon fueled in part by Trump, who has declared an “invasion” at the U.S. southern border. Polling shows more Americans want to curb migration than at any point since 2001. The desire to decrease immigration has risen among Democrats as well as Republicans.
A tough stance on immigration is generally a winning issue for Trump — and is much more popular with voters than other Trump policies, such as tariffs.
An AP-NORC poll published last month found that immigration remains Trump’s strongest issue, with roughly half of Americans supporting his policies on deportations and the border — a higher number than his overall approval rating.
“The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process,” a three-judge panel from the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote on Thursday, rejecting the Justice Department’s effort to appeal a lower court’s demand that the administration document efforts to return him.
The unanimous opinion was written by James Harvie Wilkinson III, the chief judge of the court appointed by former President Reagan.
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all,” the court continued. “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
The legal world has been on notice for a constitutional clash since Trump resumed office, meticulously analyzing a series of court rulings that challenge the White House.
After his meeting with Abrego Garcia, Van Hollen wrote that the main purpose of his trip to El Salvador was “to meet with Kilmar.”
“Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love,” the senator wrote — another comment that drew ire from Republicans, who accused the senator of sympathizing with the alleged gang member.
On Friday, after arriving back in the United States, Van Hollen told reporters that the Trump administration was attempting to change the subject from a constitutional crisis over due process. Van Hollen said that Abrego Garcia told him he has been unable to speak with his wife, as well as his attorneys — a violation of international law, the senator said — although he had recently been moved out of El Salvador’s most notorious prison to a better facility.
Other Democrats praised Van Hollen’s visit. Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State, New York senator and Democratic presidential nominee, wrote that Van Hollen was “standing up not just for Kilmar Abrego Garcia but for every American who believes in due process.”
“We can’t stop speaking out until he’s home and this administration stops its horrific practice of kidnapping people without charge or trial,” Clinton wrote.
Still, other Democrats worry that the party is falling into a political trap set by the president and his allies.
“This is a perfect test case for them,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in an interview published Tuesday with Brian Tyler Cohen, a YouTube personality. “They do think this is a broader distraction, and they think it’s the perfect argument for the Democrats to get trapped into, because it goes to the immigration issue.”
“Then, somehow, we’re ‘defending’ someone they have not provided any evidence is a member of MS-13. And somehow it gets all caught into that, and conflated into that broader issue of him being tough on crime,” Newsom continued. “That’s why they, on this one, are being even more defiant than they normally would be.”
Times staff writer Kate Linthicum in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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