Karoline Leavitt makes bold statement about deported ‘MS-13 gangster’ who ‘belongs in El Salvador’
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia ‘belongs’ in El Salvador, following a U.S. deportation that the administration now calls an ‘oversight.’
At a press briefing on a day the White House lined the north driveway with posters showing faces of illegal immigrants criminals, Leavitt was asked about the status of Abrego Garcia, who prosecutors at first said was deported due to an ‘administrative error.’
The Maryland resident, who was in the country illegally, got sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador along with more than 200 alleged gang members and other migrants last month.
A reporter asked Leavitt if there were any talks to bring him back so his claim might be adjudicated, after the Supreme Court ruled officials must ‘facilitate’ his return.
‘I will tell you what the president of El Salvador told all of you in the Oval Office,’ the White House press secretary told reporters.
‘El Salvador does not intend to smuggle a designated foreign terrorist back into the United States. He is an El Salvadorian national that is his home country. That is where he belongs, and the administration intends to comply with what President [Nayib] Bukele said of El Salvador,’ she said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt quoted the president of El Salvador saying the government would not ‘smuggle’ Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. The Supreme Court has ordered the administration to facilitate his return, after proscutors said he was deported in erorr
A federal judge gave prosecutors a week to provide information on its efforts to bring Abrego Garcia back. But then Wednesday, in a potential sign of movement, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis paused her own order with the consent of both parties.
Leavitt didn’t respond directly about whether there were any ongoing negotiations. But it comes after the Trump administration has doubled down on the deportation, repeatedly claiming Abrego Garcia was a member of a violent gang, and bringing up a protective order his wife once obtained against him.
‘I don’t accept the term error,’ said border czar Tom Homan, appearing alongside Leavitt Monday.
‘There is an oversight. There was a withholding order. But things have changed. The facts surrounding the withholding order have changed. He’s now a terrorist,’ he said.
He was referring to a lower court’s order to withhold deportation after Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said he feared gang threats in his home country.
President Trump has made his own views known, posting an image of Abrego Garcia’s tatooed hand and claiming the symbols spell out MS-13, the name of a violent gang.
The officials maintained their tough public stance even as a series of new polls have showed Trump’s support slipping even on immigration, an issue that helped propel him to the White House. His 100-day overall approval is also the lowest for any president in decades.
Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly became the latest figure to weigh in, saying Trump was ‘making a mistake’ by taking a hard line.
Leavitt said Kilmar Abrego Garcia ‘belongs’ in El Salvador, where he was sent along with other alleged gang members
‘The authorities in Tennessee did not charge this guy, Garcia, with anything, but they caught him. No, he’s not some guy cutting the lawn on Saturday in Maryland,’ he said of Abrego Garcia, who was arrested outside a suburban Maryland Home Depot.
‘But let the Justice Department prove it, and then you boot him,’ he said.
The pair of officials briefed reporters on a day another high-profile case was gathering steam. A judge on Friday said the administration deported a mother without legal status and her two-year-old daughter who is a U.S. citizen ‘with no meaningful process.’
Homan reiterated earlier comments that it is not the child who was deported, but the mother, after being asked if due process was being ‘flouted’ and the speed could lead to errors.
The lawyer for another mother who was deported and brought two young children with her said he was unable to reach his client and that she was out of the country within 24 hours.
‘If you choose have a U.S. citizen child knowing you’re in this country legally, you put yourself in that position,’ Homan responded. ‘You put your family in that position. What we did is remove children with their mothers who requested the children depart with them.’
