Officials in the Trump administration debated fabricating a claim that wrongly-deported Maryland family man Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a "leader" in the transnational MS-13 criminal gang to justify his continued incarceration in the infamous Salvadoran CECOT megaprison outside the United States, reported The New York Times on Wednesday.
This, reported Hamed Aleaziz and Alan Feuer, came in spite of the fact that federal officials already knew he had been deported in error and in violation of a court order.
"In the days before the government’s error became public, D.H.S. officials discussed trying to portray Mr. Abrego Garcia as a 'leader' of the violent street gang MS-13, even though they could find no evidence to support the claim," said the report. Additionally, "they considered ways to nullify the original order that barred his deportation to El Salvador" and strategized on how to "downplay the danger he might face in one of that country’s most notorious prisons."
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Furthermore, according to the report, "a senior Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, who counseled bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States, was fired for what Attorney General Pam Bondi said was a failure to 'zealously advocate on behalf of the United States.'"
This comes after reporting last month that lower-level Trump officials had already been devising a plan to secure Abrego Garcia's return to the United States, but then Trump stepped in personally and scuttled any discussion of it, as the case had become a proxy battle over just how unlimited Trump's power to carry out deportations should be.
Ultimately, Trump and his associates repeatedly claimed Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 member — something an immigration judge in 2020 suggested might be the case, but that has never been proven, and that he categorically denies.
The president even appeared to fall for a photoshopped image of Abrego Garcia's knuckle tattoos that spelled out "MS-13," and had a meltdown when a reporter in an interview pointed out to him that the picture was altered.
