Last month a Maryland father was arrested in the United States and deported to El Salvador along with hundreds of other men who were deemed to be terrorists. Two weeks after his arrest, the Trump administration admitted that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, was mistakenly deported.
Since then the courts and the Trump administration have gone back-and-forth via legal filings on Abrego Garcia’s situation, despite the Supreme Court ruling that the Trump administration must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.
During a visit to the White House on Monday, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele told reporters he has no plans to help return Abrego Garcia.
“How could I return him to the United States? I smuggle him to the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it,” he said.“I don’t have the power to return him to the United States. I’m not releasing — I mean, we’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country.”
President Trump with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office on April 14. (Pool via AP)
Federal immigration agents arrested Abrego Garcia on March 12 and days later deported him to El Salvador. He was sent to the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, because, as U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis wrote, police “claimed — without any evidence — that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.”
The MS-13 gang, also known as “Mara Salvatrucha 13,” was formed by Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles, in the 1980s. Trump has publicly expressed concerns about the gang multiple times since 2016.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have argued that the specific MS-13 chapter he is accused of being part of is based in New York, a state he has never lived in. Abrego Garcia told officers during his arrest that he “has lived safety in the United States with his family for a decade and has never been charged with a crime.”
The Trump administration acknowledged in a March 31 court filing that it had mistakenly deported him to El Salvador because Abrego Garcia is a Maryland resident who was granted protected legal residency status in October 2019.
Here’s how we got to this point.
March 12: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped Abrego Garcia, who was driving home after work with his 5-year-old son and told him his immigration status had changed. ICE arrested Abrego Garcia and eventually transferred him to a detention facility in Texas.
March 15: The Trump administration sends three planes of people it has classified as Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees who are alleged members of criminal organizations, including Abrego Garcia, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.
Read more from Yahoo News: Look inside El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, where the Trump administration is sending some deported immigrants
March 24: Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, files a lawsuit at a federal district court in Maryland, saying the government must help bring her husband back to the United States.
Vasquez Sura said the family was not given any information from ICE or officials about Abrego Garcia being deported to El Salvador. She said she was only able to speak to her husband over the phone up until March 15, and during their last phone call, he warned her that if he didn’t call again, it was because he was getting deported and imprisoned in CECOT.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, ]at a news conference at CASA’s Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., on April 4. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
March 31: The Trump administration admits in a court filing that “Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error.” However, the Trump administration argues in court that it cannot control whether or when Abrego Garcia can return to the United States because he is not in U.S. custody.
April 1: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tells the press, “The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang.”
April 4: Judge Xinis rules that Abrego Garcia’s arrest and detention were illegal. She orders the government to ensure Abrego Garcia returns to the United States. by April 7.
April 5: The Department of Justice appeals Xinis’s ruling.
The Justice Department places attorney Erez Reuveni, who represented the Trump administration in court on April 4, on administrative leave after telling Xinis he had told his clients to try to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States.
April 7: Three judges on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, including judges Stephanie Thacker, Harvie Wilkinson III and Robert King, unanimously deny the Trump administration’s appeal.
The U.S. government “has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process,” the judges wrote. “The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.”
The Trump administration appeals the Fourth Circuit’s ruling through the Supreme Court’s emergency docket. Chief Justice John Roberts issued a short order that temporarily allowed the Trump administration not to hold responsibility for returning Abrego Garcia to the U.S. until further review.
April 10: The Supreme Court releases a unanimous decision, saying, “Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal.”
The Supreme Court agrees that Xinis’s district court decision “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
April 11: Trump tells reporters on Air Force One: “If the Supreme Court said, ‘Bring somebody back,’ I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court.” When asked about Xinis’s order, he added, “Well, I’m not talking about the lower court. I have great respect for the Supreme Court.”
President Trump with reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Miami. (AP)
April 12: Abrego Garcia’s attorneys file a brief saying the government is still “refusing to provide even basic information about Abrego Garcia’s current location and status and what it is doing to comply with the injunction.”
The lawyers argue that the Trump administration must listen to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and Supreme Court rulings and “‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
The Trump administration reports that Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” in CECOT in El Salvador.
April 13: The administration writes in a status report that while Abrego Garcia “should not have been removed to El Salvador,” Abrego Garcia is “no longer eligible for withholding of removal because of his membership in MS-13, which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization.”
April 14: Salvadoran President Bukele meets with Trump in the Oval Office. Bukele tells reporters he doesn’t “have the power to return” Abrego Garcia to the United States, while Attorney General Pam Bondi says it’s “up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us.”
