Some of President Trump’s top aides on Monday misstated several key facts involving the deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador last month, blatantly contradicting other members of the administration who have maintained for weeks that his expulsion was an “administrative error.”
In remarks from the Oval Office and on television, Mr. Trump’s advisers suddenly declared that the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, had been lawfully sent to a prison in El Salvador.
The White House also sought to portray a recent Supreme Court ruling in Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case as a victory when in fact the decision was a nuanced one. It partly found in favor of Mr. Abrego Garcia while also leaving open a loophole for the administration to avoid bringing him back from El Salvador.
The efforts by the Trump administration to misrepresent the case came as President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador announced after a meeting with Mr. Trump that his government would not return Mr. Abrego Garcia to U.S. soil.
Here are some of the ways in which the White House has twisted the facts.
A top Trump adviser said Mr. Abrego Garcia had not been mistakenly deported.
When Mr. Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant, was arrested while looking for work at a Home Depot in Maryland in 2019, a judge determined that he should not be deported to his homeland because he might face danger there. The ruling, known as a “withholding from removal” order, meant that he could stay in the United States with a measure of legal protection.
In March, however, he was suddenly pulled over by federal agents who accused him of being a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 and inaccurately told him that his protected status in the country had changed. Within three days, he was on a plane with other migrants to a prison in El Salvador called CECOT, which is known for its human rights violations.