The U.S. government accidentally deported a man to El Salvador because of an "administrative error," landing him in a notorious megajail and leaving him stuck there in legal limbo, according to legal papers filed Monday.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia came to the United States from El Salvador in 2011 and is a legal resident protected by a 2019 court order that prevented him from being sent back to his home country.
But in court papers filed Monday, the government admitted that "on March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error."
Abrego Garcia lives in Maryland with his wife and 5-year-old child, who is autistic and intellectually disabled. The couple both work full-time, the filing says. NBC Washington first reported the deportation, and The Atlantic first reported the "administrative error."
Garcia’s deportation comes as The Trump administration continues to deport hundreds of people to El Salvador, many of them from Venezuela and almost all bound for the maximum-security Terrorist Confinement Center, known by its Spanish acronym CECOT.
The deportation appears to coincide with the departure of three planeloads of people to El Salvador on March 15. Lawyers for some of those who were deported said they were falsely accused of gang affiliations because of their tattoos.
Garcia, his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and their legal team filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Maryland last week calling for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to ensure his return to the United States and for the government to stop paying El Salvador to keep him in prison.
In its filing Monday, the government said the U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction to seek his release.
Salvadoran government images show masked guards marching crowds of men with shaven heads inside the largest jail in Latin America.
To her shock, Garcia's wife learned her husband was being detained only after she spotted him in an image in a news article with his head shaved and wearing white overalls, the lawsuit says. The men were kneeling, their faces obscured — but she said she spotted his tattoos and two scars on his head.
The government, however, alleges that Garcia was an "active member of the criminal gang MS-13," citing an unidentified informant at a 2019 bond hearing.
Garcia's lawyers strenuously deny that and claim the government "has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded allegation." Garcia left El Salvador to escape gang violence, his lawyers say, after gangsters threatened to kill him in an attempt to extort his parents.
Vice President JD Vance weighed into the case and falsely said Tuesday on X that Garcia was a "convicted MS-13 gang member." Garcia has no criminal convictions in the United States or in El Salvador, his legal team said in the lawsuit.
In a follow-up post Tuesday, Vance stood by his comments and called Garcia "an illegal immigrant with no right to be in our country," despite the 2019 protection order against his removal from the country.
"We disagree that he is an MS-13 gang member. The only basis of his gang membership was a confidential informant, there was never any hard and fast proof," Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a statement to NBC News in response to Vance’s posts.
"There is a judicial process. They could have gone back to the judge who, in 2019, gave him an order of protection and could have asked that judge to lift that order. They didn’t do that, they just put him on an airplane," Sandoval-Moshenberg added.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also addressed the case Tuesday, reiterating the claim that he was a member of MS-13.
On March 12, after he finished his shift as a sheet metal worker and picked up his child, Garcia was pulled over and arrested by Homeland Security agents, one of whom told him his "status has changed," says a lawsuit calling for his release from last week.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers told him that his wife had to collect the couple's child within 10 minutes or he would be handed over to Child Protective Services, the filing alleges.
She arrived and found Garcia "confused, distraught and crying," but she got no explanation for his arrest, the filing says.
Garcia was interviewed and repeatedly asked about gang affiliations but told his wife that he was due to appear before an immigration judge and expected to be released. He then called her from a detention center in Texas, telling her he was about to be deported, the filing says.
Garcia's lawsuit accuses the Department of Homeland Security, ICE and several Cabinet members named as defendants of deciding to deport him without following the law, in full knowledge that "El Salvador tortures individuals detained in CECOT."
"Upon information and belief, they did so knowing and intending that the Government of El Salvador would detain Plaintiff Abrego Garcia in CECOT immediately upon arrival," the lawsuit says.
The government's court filing Monday said members of Garcia's legal team "have not clearly shown a likelihood that Abrego Garcia will be tortured or killed in CECOT."
The human rights organization Cristosal reported last year that at least 261 people have died in Salvadoran prisons since 2022, while Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other groups have documented extreme crowding and torture at Salvadoran prisons, including CECOT.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A DHS spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday that "the individual in question is a member of the brutal MS-13 gang — we have intelligence reports that he is involved in human trafficking."
"Whether he is in El Salvador or a detention facility in the U.S., he should be locked up," the spokesperson added. "Remarkable that The Atlantic and other MSM continue to do the bidding of these vicious gangs and ignore their victims."
A judge in Greenbelt, Maryland, is due to hear the case Friday.
