A man was sent to El Salvador due to ‘administrative error’ despite protected legal status, filings show

The United States government accidentally deported a man to El Salvador due to an “administrative error,” landing him in a notorious mega-jail and leaving him stuck there in legal limbo, according to legal papers filed on Monday.

Kilmar Arbrego Garcia came to the U.S. in 2011 from El Salvador and is a legal resident protected by a 2019 court order that prevented him from being sent back to his home country.

But, in court papers filed Monday, the government admitted that “on March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error.”

Garcia lives in Maryland with his wife and 5-year-old child, who is autistic and intellectually disabled. The couple both work full-time, the filing says. This incident was first reported by The Atlantic. 

Garcia’s deportation comes as President Donald Trump’s administration continues to deport hundreds of people to El Salvador, many of them from Venezuela and almost all bound for the maximum security “Terrorist Confinement Center,” known by its Spanish acronym CECOT.

The deportation appears to coincide with the March 15 departure of three planeloads of people to El Salvador. Lawyers for some of those who were deported said they were falsely accused of gang affiliations because of their tattoos.

Garcia, his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and their legal team filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Maryland last week calling for Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to ensure his return to the U.S. and for the government to stop paying El Salvador to keep him in prison.

In its filing on Monday, the government said that the U.S. courts don’t have jurisdiction to seek his release.

Salvadorean government images show crowds of men with shaven heads being marched by masked guards inside the largest jail in Latin America.

To her shock, Garcia’s wife only learned her husband was being detained after spotting him in an image in a news article with his head shaved and wearing white overalls, the lawsuit says. The men were kneeling, their faces obscured — but she said she spotted his tattoos and two scars on his head.

The government, however, alleges that Garcia was an “active member of the criminal gang MS-13,” citing an unidentified informant at a 2019 bond hearing.

Garcia’s lawyers strenuously deny this and claim the government “has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded allegation.” Garcia left El Salvador to escape gang violence, his lawyers say, after gangsters threatened to kill him in an attempt to extort his parents.

They do not deny that they had no legal authority to send him there.”

Vice President JD Vance weighed into the case and falsely said on X Tuesday that Garcia was a “convicted MS-13 gang member.” Garcia has no criminal convictions in the U.S. or in El Salvador, his legal team said in the lawsuit.

In a follow-up post on X Tuesday, Vance stood by his comments and called Garcia “an illegal immigrant with no right to be in our country,” despite the 2019 protection order against his removal from the U.S.

“We disagree that he is an MS-13 gang member. The only basis of his gang membership was a confidential informant, there was never any hard and fast proof,” Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a statement to NBC News in response to Vance’s posts on X.

“There is a judicial process. They could have gone back to the judge who in 2019 gave him an order of protection and could have asked that judge to lift that order. They didn’t do that, they just put him on an airplane,” Sandoval-Moshenberg added.

On March 12, after finishing his shift as a sheet metal worker and picking up his child, Garcia was pulled over and arrested by Homeland Security agents, with one of them telling him his “status has changed,” a lawsuit calling for his release from last week shows.

ICE officers allegedly told him that his wife had to collect the couple’s child within 10 minutes or he would be handed over to Child Protective Services, the filing says.

She arrived and found Garcia “confused, distraught and crying,” but she received no explanation for his arrest, the filing says.

Garcia was interviewed and repeatedly asked about gang affiliations but told his wife that he was due to appear before an immigration judge and expected to be released. He then called her from a detention center in Texas, telling her he was about to be deported, the filing says.

Garcia’s lawsuit accuses the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and several cabinet members named as defendants of deciding to deport him without following the law, in full knowledge that “El Salvador tortures individuals detained in CECOT.”

“Upon information and belief, they did so knowing and intending that the Government of El Salvador would detain Plaintiff Abrego Garcia in CECOT immediately upon arrival,” the lawsuit said.

The government’s Monday court filing said that Garcia’s legal team “have not clearly shown a likelihood that Abrego Garcia will be tortured or killed in CECOT.”

The human rights organization Cristosal last year reported that at least 261 people have died in Salvadoran prisons since 2022, while groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented extreme crowding and torture at Salvadorean prisons, including CECOT.

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.

The case is due to be heard by a judge in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Friday.