President Donald Trump’s border czar has sneered in the face of a Supreme Court ruling demanding the return of a Maryland dad wrongfully deported from the United States.
“I think we made the right decision,” Tom Homan told Newsmax on Saturday of immigration authorities removing Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the country earlier in March, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) has already admitted was carried out by mistake as the result of an “administrative error.”
A judge has since ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return to the United States as soon as possible.
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“They want us to facilitate, we’ll facilitate,” he went on, noting that there would be limits to what his agents can do about “an El Salvadoran national in custody of the El Salvadoran government, so we’ll facilitate what we can.”
Homan also used his TV appearance to repeat claims that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 gang member, despite the deported man never having been charged or convicted of a crime.
In fact, the 29-year-old Maryland dad previously testified in court that resisting gang recruitment in his native El Salvador was the reason he sought asylum in the United States.
The DOJ had initially attempted to assert it would not be able to coordinate getting Abrego Garcia back into the country, a position the Supreme Court slammed as “plainly wrong” in its recent ruling.
Maryland District Court Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered the Trump administration to “take all available steps” to bring him home, demanded to be updated on his location and plans for his return during a session on Friday.
At that hearing, she lambasted the government’s lawyers for failing to provide that information, saying she was “extremely troubled” by the lack of cooperation.
The case has now effectively entered into a standoff, with Xinis demanding daily updates about efforts to secure Abriego Garcia’s return, and with the DOJ’s legal representatives saying they can’t provide information they haven’t actually been given by their clients.
