WASHINGTON — Repeating a disputed claim from Attorney General Pam Bondi and other Trump administration officials, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador last month is a member of the MS-13 gang.
In a statement late Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security called Kilmar Abrego Garcia a “violent criminal illegal alien” who “belongs behind bars and off American soil.”
“We hear far too much in the mainstream media about sob stories of gang members and criminal illegals and not enough about their victims,” Noem said in the statement.
On March 12, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials took Garcia into custody, claiming he is a member of MS-13, and sent him to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. A native of El Salvador who came to the United States when he was 16, the now-29-year-old Garcia was granted protection by a judge from being deported back to El Salvador over fears of gang persecution.
Abrego Garcia's lawyers and wife have insisted he is not a member of MS-13.
The White House has said Garcia’s deportation was an administrative error but insists the U.S. government lacks the authority to bring him back from El Salvador. Last week, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling ordering the Trump administration to faciliate Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S.
This week, the Justice Department said U.S. courts don’t have the authority to force the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. In a news conference Tuesday, Bondi said Abrego Garcia “is not coming back to our country” because he is in El Salvador, which she said is “where the president plans on keeping him.”
On Monday, during a White House visit, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said he would not return Abrego Garcia to the United States. Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa reiterated that stance Wednesday, when Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., visited the country to try to negotiate Abrego Garcia’s release.
The Department of Homeland Security's statement included a list of eight so-called “fast facts,” including the allegation that Garcia had rolls of cash and drugs when he was arrested in 2019 for loitering outside a Home Depot. DHS also said Abrego Garcia was wearing a sweatshirt showing rolls "of money covering the ears, mouth, and eyes of presidents on various currency denominations." The imagery is a known MS-13 gang symbol of "see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil," the department added.
DHS included excerpts of the police report, which resulted in no charges being filed, as well as a copy of a civil protective order Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, filed in 2021 after a physical altercation.
“Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process,” Sura said in a statement after the document was released Wednesday. “We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling. Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect.”
Sura described Abrego Garcia as a loving partner and father.
Her defense of her husband comes as the Trump administration continues to assert Abrego Garcia's alleged gang affiliation. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room, you would think we deported a candidate for Father of the Year.”