Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin may have inadvertently sabotaged his own agency’s months-long efforts to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia, according to court filings and statements from his lawyers. The Trump administration has spent a year trying to remove the Salvadoran immigrant a second time after he was ordered returned to the U.S. from a brutal prison in El Salvador last year.
The administration had considered at least five countries, including four in Africa, before settling on Liberia as “a final country of removal” in April. However, Mullin, who admitted he was not familiar with the details of the case, told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the U.S. would “gladly” send Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica if he agreed. “Great, if he’s willing to do that we’d be happy to send him,” Mullin said.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia cited Mullin’s remarks as “further evidence” against his deportation in a filing to the federal judge overseeing a lawsuit over his wrongful removal. The judge has blocked ICE from re-deporting or detaining him, noting the government’s “one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success.”
A Homeland Security spokesperson insisted that “one thing is for certain, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s final order of removal stands, and activist judges cannot change that fact.” The administration has been fighting in court to re-deport him even as federal prosecutors pursue a parallel criminal case, which was dismissed last month after a judge found vindictive prosecution.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years after fleeing gang violence in El Salvador and entering the U.S. illegally as a teenager. He was deported to El Salvador’s CECOT mega prison last March, where he says he endured torture and abuse before being returned to the U.S. in June.
