Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia had legal protection from being deported to his home country of El Salvador, from which his lawyers say he fled aged 16.
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The Trump administration has admitted to deporting a Maryland resident to a Salvadoran mega-prison due to an "administrative error" despite a court order barring him from being sent to the country.
While it appeared to acknowledge the mistake, the government then argued it could not return him to the US, where court records filed by his lawyers state he has lived since 2011, and has a family.
Attorneys for the US government conceded in a court filing on Monday that they deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national living in Maryland with his wife and five-year-old son, despite him being legally protected from being returned to his country of origin.
Both his wife and child, who is disabled, are US citizens, lawyers told the court.
“Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the government stated in its filing.
The defendants said the US did not have jurisdiction to secure his return from the notorious CECOT prison.
Deporting someone with protected legal status
Abrego Garcia was granted protected legal status by an immigration judge in 2019 which prohibited the government from deporting him to El Salvador.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia stated that he came to the US around the age of 16 after fleeing gang violence. "Beginning around 2006, gang members had stalked, hit, and threatened to kidnap and kill him in order to coerce his parents to succumb to their increasing demands for extortion," they said in their filing.
The Salvadoran national has no criminal record in the US or any other country, according to his legal team. It said he has no gang affiliation, despite claims by the US government, which Abrego Garcia's lawyers said "has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation".
In the government court filing, which was first reported by The Atlantic, the government downplayed concerns that Abrego Garcia was likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT.
The case appears to be a first: Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told the magazine that he had never seen a case in which the government knowingly deported someone who had already been granted protected status.
Lawyers for the plaintiff said that immigration authorities "would have no legal impediment" in deporting him to any other country except for El Salvador, claiming that the "defendants found those legal procedures bothersome, so they merely ignored them and deported Plaintiff Abrego Garcia to El Salvador anyway".
When contacted by Euronews, the US Department of Homeland Security insisted that it possessed "intelligence reports" that Abrego Garcia was a gang member.
"Whether he is in El Salvador or a detention facility in the US, he should be locked up," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Euronews.
Euronews also contacted ICE for comment.
The Trump administration on 16 March deported more than 250 Venezuelans without a hearing to a maximum security prison in El Salvador under a deal with the Central American country.
The government accused them of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang and deported them under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – legislation which has been invoked just three times in US history.
After seeing a photo in a news article about CECOT, where prisoners' faces were not visible, Abrego Garcia’s wife identified her husband based on his tattoos and two scars on his head.