A former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stated that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man deported to El Salvador’s terrorist confinement center (CECOT), will be removed once more if he is allowed to return to the U.S.
“Let’s start where it is operationally, if he comes back to the United States, he’s going to be deported again,” Ron Vitiello, who served during President Trump’s first term, said Thursday evening on NewsNation’s “The Hill.”
Although the Supreme Court and an appeals court supported a lower court ruling that ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release, the White House maintains that there’s no chance he will be allowed back into the country.
Vitiello dismissed efforts by Democrats to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. as “grandstanding.”
Both President Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele declared on Monday that they would not assist in Abrego Garcia’s release. The administration admitted in court that his removal had been an “administrative error,” but has since changed its stance.
“If the roles were reversed, if there was an American citizen in jail in the United States who did something in El Salvador that concerned them, and they asked us to send an American citizen just because they asked us to, we wouldn’t do that either,” Vitiello remarked.
The White House claims that Abrego Garcia has connections to the MS-13 gang and is a criminal, a statement that both he and his wife deny.
An immigration judge had previously allowed him to stay in the U.S. after he fled El Salvador due to violence and persecution. Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland for more than a decade before ICE deported him to his home country.
