White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday that the Left-wing narrative being peddled about an illegal immigrant mistakenly being deported back to El Salvador is not based on the facts.
The illegal in question, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was arrested by ICE and sent to El Salvador last month on one of the Trump administration’s deportation flights. While a judge ordered that the Salvadoran be removed from the country in 2019, the order prohibited Abrego Garcia from being sent back to his home country, acknowledging that he would likely face persecution or torture. An “administrative error” placed the suspected MS-13 member on a flight to El Salvador, where the Trump administration has been sending deportees to an infamous Salvadoran prison.
Pressed about the deportation in the briefing room, Leavitt laid out four “facts” that she says support the administration’s actions and call into question Left-wing reports and commentary that paint the illegal as an “innocent father.”
Any comment on this, @marcorubio? How about you, @JDVance? @elonmusk?
You just admitted to accidentally sending an innocent father from Maryland to a torture dungeon in El Salvador. And you refuse to do anything about it. https://t.co/TCykWFQH4Z
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) April 1, 2025
“The error that you are referring to was a clerical error — it was an administrative error,” she said. “The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador, and will not be returning to our country, was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang. That is fact number one.”
“Fact number two, we also have credible intelligence proving that this individual was involved in human trafficking,” she continued. “Fact number three, this individual was a member, actually a leader of the brutal MS-13 gang which this president has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.”
Laying out “fact number four,” Leavitt said that “foreign terrorists do not have legal protections in the United States of America anymore, and it is within the president’s executive authority and power to deport these heinous individuals from American communities.”
That was a promise President Donald Trump campaigned on, the press secretary said. “And every single person in this room should be grateful for that considering MS-13 is very prevalent and prominent here in the District of Columbia, in Maryland, and in Virginia. The president, the Attorney General, everyone who has been involved in these operations is focused on eradicating these criminals and terrorists from our communities.”
Leavitt added that there’s “a lot of evidence” from the Department of Homeland Security and ICE indicating the illegal was a member of MS-13.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says the Salvadoran illegal was deported because ICE and DHS has “a lot of evidence” that he was in fact an MS-13 gang member and human trafficker:
“The administration maintains the position that this individual that was deported to… pic.twitter.com/nYoV0GbuQW
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 1, 2025
Further, Leavitt emphasized the brutality of MS-13, the gang responsible for a number of murders inside the U.S.
“Let me tell you why we’ve made this commitment,” she said. “MS-13, may I remind each and every one of you, is a brutal and vicious gang. They raped and strangled a 20-year-old autistic woman to death in Maryland. They hacked four people to death with machetes in a park on Long Island. They have kidnapped, sexually tortured, and shot a teenage girl in Texas after she insulted them; allegedly killed and mutilated a 17-year-old girl in Virginia, stabbing him 16 times and cutting off his hands. They beheaded and cut out the heart of a man in Washington DC.”
“They raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl in California,” Leavitt continued, “they sex trafficked a slew of young girls, including one who was just 12 years old; raped an 11-year-old girl in Brooklyn while her brother was in the room, sex trafficked a 13-year-old in Maryland and Virginia, miles away from this White House, even beating her 26 times on her backside with a baseball bat; pressured homeless New Yorkers to undergo unnecessary surgeries, such as spinal fusion in order to bolster their fraudulent lawsuits.”
“These are vicious criminals,” she stated. “This is a vicious gang, and I wish that the media would spend just a second of the same time you have spent trying to litigate each and every individual of this gang who has been deported from our country as the innocent Americans whose lives have been lost at the hands of these brutal criminals.”
Karoline Leavitt torches the leftist media for their lack of coverage on MS-13 gang members
These monsters have committed horrific crimes, and they should all face justice. pic.twitter.com/6xoFfGSBzd
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) April 1, 2025
Related: Vance Defends Trump Admin After It Admits To Mistakenly Deporting Salvadoran
