Who is Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia? If you ask the left, he's an innocent father of three (one biological kid, two step-kids) who lives in Maryland, has no criminal record, and was wrongly deported to El Salvador's most notorious prison, CECOT, or the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo. If you ask the right, he's a dangerous MS-13 member who was in the country illegally, has made only bullshit asylum claims, and does not deserve to live in our country. Who's telling the truth?
Here's what we know to be true: Abrego Garcia had been in the U.S. since 2012, living under protected legal status—withholding of removal, which protects him from deportation back to El Salvador due to likelihood that he'd be persecuted there—since 2019, married to a U.S. citizen, with a 5-year-old autistic child. He has no criminal record here. He worked in construction for years, soliciting in Home Depot parking lots, and finally got a job as a sheet metal apprentice about a year ago. On March 12, he was stopped and informed by ICE agents that his status had changed. On March 15, he "was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error," say attorneys with the Justice Department. Now he's at CECOT, the notorious prison in rural El Salvador, touted by President Nayib Bukele as an option for the U.S. government to send deportees.
Contra the DOJ, which says he was wrongly removed to El Salvador, Vice President J.D. Vance says Abrego Garcia "was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here" and that "it's gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize."
