In a new court filing, the Trump administration said it made a mistake in deporting a Maryland man with protected legal status to a prison in El Salvador.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Kilmer Armado Abrego-Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old child, was mistakenly a part of three planes with Venezuelan deportees to the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center last month. The filing appears to be the first time the administration has admitted a mistake during the legal fight over President Donald Trump’s decision to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportation of over 100 Venezuelan nationals it alleges are in the Tren de Aragua gang.
“Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego-Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” an ICE official said in a court filing. The Alien Enemies Act was invoked to deport members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and Abrego-Garcia is alleged to be a member of MS-13.
In 2019, Abrego-Garcia was deemed by an immigration judge to be a likely member of the MS-13 gang based in Los Angeles. In the same decision, the court agreed at the time that he should not be deported to El Salvador and provided him with the legal status of “withholding of removal,” determining that his fear of being persecuted or tortured by gangs in El Salvador was credible.
Abrego-Garcia was then released from custody and has been living in Maryland with his family.
Attorneys representing Abrego-Garcia said he “is not a member of or has no affiliation with Tren de Aragua, MS-13, or any other criminal or street gang” and said that the U.S. government “has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation.”
While the government acknowledged the error, it said that because Abrego-Garcia is no longer in U.S. custody, the court cannot order him to be returned to the U.S., nor can the court order El Salvador to return him.
On March 12, 2025, he was arrested by ICE and sent to the prison in El Salvador. His wife recognized him in a video showing prisoners shackled.
A federal judge has blocked any further deportations under the Alien Enemies Act while the issue unfolds in court. The judge, James Boasberg, is also weighing if the White House had defied his previous order by moving forward with deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador after he ordered the March 15 flights be halted or turned around.
Vice President JD Vance responded to a social media post asking for an explanation from Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau, who described Abrego-Garcia as “an innocent father from Maryland.” Vance told Favreau he “apparently didn’t read” the court documents because Abrego-Garcia was a “convicted MS-13 gang member.”
“It’s gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize,” Vance said.
However, Abrego-Garcia was not described as a convicted gang member in the court documents. Instead, a judge in 2019 denied his release from detention over a claim that Abrego-Garcia was a member of that gang, a decision that was upheld by the Board of Immigration Appeals.
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In another social media post, which Vance edited after mistakenly saying courts under the Biden administration found Abrego-Garcia to be in the MS-13 gang, Vance said, “The man is an illegal immigrant with no right to be in our country,” adding, “Because he is not a citizen, he does not get a full jury trial by peers. In other words, whatever ‘due process’ he was entitled to, he received.”
Undocumented immigrants can be deported without due process under expedited removal, which applies to migrants found within 100 miles of the U.S. border within two weeks of entering the country.
