CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Monday on “The Lead” that the Trump administration is relying on “flimsy” evidence in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to an El Salvador prison.
Tapper said, “Just a quick fact check on some of this and some important background on Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen. He has one child with her and two stepchildren. It is true that Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador, and it is true that he entered the United States illegally sometime around 2011. His attorneys say that he was initially fleeing gang violence in El Salvador. As for the allegation that he’s a member of MS-13, which he fervently denies, well, the evidence of that is much more flimsy. According to court documents, Garcia and three other men were arrested in 2019. He was asked if he was a gang member. He said no. Garcia had been deemed a gang member by the Prince George’s County Police Department in part because he was at the time wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie, and a confidential informant claimed that Garcia was an active member of MS-13, although he denied that at the time.
He continued, “Now, later that year, an immigration judge granted Garcia protective status, allowing him to stay in the United States legally, finding that even though Garcia was liable for deportation because he was in the country illegally, he should be protected from deportation, the judge said, to El Salvador because that would constitute a danger to him. Here we are six years later, despite that protective order, and despite zero criminal convictions, Garcia is now back in El Salvador, and not just El Salvador in a notorious prison there. And while Trump’s officials claim and admit, rather, that it was an oversight that he was deported to begin with, they’re still clinging to this rather shoddily proven claim that he is, without question, an MS-13 member. And they’re doing that to justify the fact that he’s sitting in this prison in El Salvador.”
Tapper added, “Yeah, I think most people probably have more of an issue of him being deported to a notorious prison than they do have an issue with him being deported in general. But Trump is also suggesting he would like to send so-called homegrown violent criminals, American citizens, to prisons in El Salvador.”
Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN
