The Trump administration conceded that an administrative error resulted in a man being deported to El Salvador when he shouldn't have been. 

Such a mistake shouldn't be downplayed--the system broke down and something that shouldn't have happened did. 

But please...the claim that he was a poor, innocent father who was hurting nobody and was casually ripped off the streets and sent to a torture camp for no reason is complete and utter bulls**t, and every single person and organization--including The Atlantic, which broke the story--is a lying sack of fecal matter. 

EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration has acknowledged that it grabbed a Maryland father with protected status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador—but claims that courts are powerless to order his return, @NickMiroff reports: https://t.co/GLR1VzwGzE

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) April 1, 2025

EXCLUSIVE! Hot off the presses. Kindly dad ripped away from his kids because he had a tattoo! 

We are supposed to be appalled-APPALLED, I tell you!!!--that an innocent man was treated so badly due to Nazi Tom Homan and the Bad Orange Man. 

I would be. I got queasy when I heard the story, just as I was supposed to. You would be too if you believed an innocent man was sent to serve time in a Maximum Security prison in El Salvador. 

The propaganda worked. As it so often does. I felt defensive, in the wrong, and worried that all the good that Trump and Homan were doing would be damaged by what amounted to a horrible one-off mistake. 

...in Monday’s court filing, attorneys for the government admitted that the Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported accidentally. “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 told the court. Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he is in Salvadoran custody.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, said he’s never seen a case in which the government knowingly deported someone who had already received protected legal status from an immigration judge. He is asking the court to order the Trump administration to ask for Abrego Garcia’s return and, if necessary, to withhold payment to the Salvadoran government, which says it’s charging the United States $6 million a year to jail U.S. deportees.

Trump-administration attorneys told the court to dismiss the request on multiple grounds, including that Trump’s “primacy in foreign affairs” outweighs the interests of Abrego Garcia and his family.

“They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,’’ Sandoval-Moshenberg told me. “If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

Except it didn't happen, at least not as we were told. "Maryland father" turns out to be an adjudicated member of MS-13 who apparently has the wits to inseminate somebody (even I am smart enough to have done that),  who had been ordered deported. He was still here "legally" because he made the claim that if he were deported back to El Salvador, he might face torture--after all, gang members torture other gang members, so he has a "legitimate" fear. He would have done the same to his rival gang members, so his fear is rational. 

🚨Karoline Leavitt: “If you just saw the headline from the insane, failing Atlantic magazine this morning, you would think this individual was father of the year,"

"This individual is an illegal criminal ... a leader in the brutal MS-13 gang ... involved in human trafficking." pic.twitter.com/Ny4T0lHaEB

— Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) April 1, 2025

The Atlantic curated the news in this case to create a narrative that would trigger all our emotional erogenous zones, and it worked. At least it worked on me for a bit, and certainly has worked on people who still take The Atlantic seriously, many of whom I know. 

I just read the court filings to get the full context (which may not satisfy either side):

The man is an illegal migrant from El Salvador. In 2019, ICE presented sufficient evidence that he was a member of the MS-13 gang for an immigration judge to deny him bond and order his… https://t.co/Xb9VY39KG8

— AG (@AGHamilton29) April 1, 2025

I just read the court filings to get the full context (which may not satisfy either side):

The man is an illegal migrant from El Salvador. In 2019,  ICE presented sufficient evidence that he was a member of the MS-13 gang for an immigration judge to deny him bond and order his removal.

However, he then filed an asylum claim and obtained a withholding of removal order under the convention against torture. Essentially, he argued that despite his being here illegally and likely being a gang member based on the previous finding, he could be tortured if sent back to El Salvador. Such an order could still allow the government to deport him, but not to his home country, at least not without first contesting the order.

He has been using that order since 2019 to avoid deportation.

With that context, referring to him just as a "Maryland father" obviously does not tell the full story.  And The Atlantic reporter cites the lawyer to downplay the previous finding of MS-13 ties, which I view as an unreliable source.

However, it also does not change that the Trump admin, emphasizing government incompetence, screwed up by deporting him to the country he wasn't supposed to be deported to based on the 2019 order. This highlights the need for checks in this program.

So yes, our poor 'Maryland Father' was eligible for deportation, suggesting that his lawyer was full of BS as they often are, and the only issue in question is what country he could be deported to. His right to remain in the United States was nonexistent. Not quite the story you have been fed by Pravda. 

My comment is that according to the court document you apparently didn’t read he was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here.

My further comment is that it’s gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize. https://t.co/cPnloeyXYk

— JD Vance (@JDVance) April 1, 2025

That doesn't excuse the mistake that was made--sending him to a country to which a judge had denied the government the right to send him--but that is hardly the sympathetic story we have been fed. If every liberal got outraged every time the government made a mistake they would be in a permanent state of apoplexy. 

Bring the gangbangers home now!

Democrats finally found a winning message. 🤡 https://t.co/Q3cSbcs0Tl

— Gerry Callahan (@GerryCallahan) April 1, 2025

Come to think about it, they ARE in a perpetual state of apoplexy, although rarely because the government makes mistakes. They seem to love it when our Department of Education and the teachers' unions turn out kids who can't read, do math, or survive when somebody uses the pronouns "he" or "she." 

Even I, who preaches that one should never, ever, EVER trust a story pushed by the Pravda Media that fits their preferred narrative was taken in, if only for a few hours. 

I should know better, of course, but propaganda works.