Donald Trump’s claims he can’t do anything to free a dad wrongly deported – and now banged up in an El Salvador mega prison – have been slammed as “shocking”.
Kilmar Ábrego García, 29, was booted out of the US earlier this year following an “administrative error”, the government admitted, but still finds himself in the jail, which is home to gang members. Pressure grows on the Trump administration to release the young father, who lived in Maryland with his wife Jennifer and children. Jennifer spoke this week of her heartbreak to continue to be without her partner.
Now, a federal appeals court says it is “shocking” The Trump administration claims it can’t do anything to free Mr Ábrego García. When asked about the findings of the three-judge panel at the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Mr Trump ducked reporters’ questions on Thursday evening.
The world leader had sent more than 260 Venezuelans and Salvadorans, who officials were gang members, packing last month – but Mr Ábrego García was not linked to such crime and had protected legal status in Maryland.
This was considered on Thursday by the judges, who unanimously refused to suspend a judge’s decision to order sworn testimony by Trump administration officials to determine if they complied with her instruction to facilitate the dad’s return.
The panel said the Republican president’s government is “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”
“Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who was nominated by Republican President Ronald Reagan, wrote in the scathing seven-page report.
The appeals court panel concluded the man deserves due process, even if the government can connect him to a gang. The report adds: “If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order.”
But when asked by journalists if he believed Mr Ábrego García was entitled to due process, Mr Trump dodged the grilling. The 78-year-old politician said: “I have to refer, again, to the lawyers. I have to do what they ask me to do.”
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Speaking in the Oval Office, the President added: “I had heard that there were a lot of things about a certain gentleman — perhaps it was that gentleman — that would make that case be a case that’s easily winnable on appeal. So we’ll just have to see. I’m gonna have to respond to the lawyers.”
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