By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2025-04-05 14:51:24 | Updated at 2025-04-06 05:56:33
15 hours ago
President Donald Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller invited backlash with his callous response to the accidental deportation of a father wrongfully suspected of being MS-13 gang member.
Miller took to social media after US District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the White House to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the US, after he was rounded up last month by ICE and sent to a hellhole gang prison in El Salvador.
Following Xinis's order to bring Garcia home, Miller responded to an X account named 'End Wokeness', saying: 'Marxist judge now thinks she's president of El Salvador.'
Miller's remark was criticized as it came after the Trump administration admitted Garcia was illegally deported by mistake, with his detention coming after he was denied any due process.
Garcia is married to a US citizen with whom he shares a five-year-old child, and is suing the Trump administration over his removal from the US after the White House admitted it was due to an 'administrative error.'
'This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13,' the White House said.
But while the Trump administration publicly admits the mistake, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also mocked Garcia's predicament.
She said in a statement after Xinis' order: 'We are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador.'
President Trump's deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller invited backlash with his callous response to the accidental deportation of a father wrongfully suspected of being MS-13 gang member
Kilmar Abrego Garcia (pictured) was deported last month and sent to a hellhole gang prison in El Salvador in what the White House admitted was due to an 'administrative error'
Following Xinis's order to bring Garcia home, Miller responded to an X account named 'End Wokeness', saying: 'Marxist judge now thinks she's president of El Salvador'
Garcia was one of almost 300 foreign nationals who were rounded up in the US and deported to El Salvador, before being locked up in the nation's notorious CECOT prison.
Although the men sent to the prison were suspected of being linked to cartels and organized crime, none appear to have been given due process, leading to errors such as Garcia's imprisonment.
Garcia was arrested in Baltimore as he left his job as a sheet metal worker, and was detained while on his way to pick up his five-year-old son.
In her order, Xinis described his detention as an 'illegal act', and wrote: 'The record reflects that Abrego Garcia was apprehended in Maryland without legal basis… and without further process or legal justification was removed to El Salvador.'
The mocking attitude toward Xinis's order and Garcia's detention extended all the way up to El Salvador's president Nayib Buekele.
Buekele responded to an account named 'End Wokeness' announcing Xinis' order with a gif of an animated rabbit looking confused.
The mocking attitude toward Xinis's order and Garcia's detention extended all the way up to El Salvador's president Nayib Buekele, who responded to an X post announcing Xinis' order with a gif of an animated rabbit looking confused
Garcia's wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura, an American citizen, seen speaking at a news conference where she pleaded for her husband's return
Sura identified this image of a man seen in El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison this week as her husband
Abrego-Garcia arrived at the notorious supermax prison CECOT in El Salvador March 15 on one of three planes from the US.
His removal also contradicts what the Trump White House originally said about the deportations to El Salvador-- when officials claimed some 300 men who were on those planes were all Venezuelans who belong to the global criminal organization Tren de Argua or TdA.
However, Abrego-Garcia is a native of El Salvador, and his attorney has denied he belongs to MS-13, TdA or any other criminal group.
Abrego-Garcia's lawyers are demanding he be returned to the US, however the Trump administration is outrageously claiming that since he isn't in US custody, the court cannot order him to be returned to the US nor can the court order El Salvador to return him.
It appears that Bukele is also not interested in taking the judge's order seriously.
During Trump's first term in office in 2019, Abrego-Garcia was flagged as a criminal by a confidential informant who "had advised that Abrego Garcia was an active member" of the gang MS-13, his lawyers told ABC News.
No evidence was ever presented proving he was a member of the gang, and he was allowed to file an application for asylum.
According to his lawyers, ICE officials detained Abrego-Garcia in March, informing him that 'immigration status had changed.'
He was taken to a detention center in Texas before being flown to El Salvador.
Garcia is a native of El Salvador, and his attorney has denied he belongs to MS-13, TdA or any other criminal group
The legality on the Trump fights to El Salvador has been challenged in court, as Pres. Donald Trump invoked a law meant to be used during only times of war to suspend the legal process for Venezuelans accused of being TdA members.
That's how the government was able to remove the men as quickly as they did, since they never had a day in court, and many of the Venezuelans removed now claim they are not TdA members.
Several judges have also ruled that the flights to Venezuela violated the deportees rights, even if they are Venezuelan TdA members-- neither of which Abrego-Garcia is.
