The White House has dug in on its refusal to return a man who US officials have acknowledged was wrongly deported last month to an El Salvador mega-prison.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled down on accusations that Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang.
Leavitt also accused the 29-year-old of domestic violence, citing records showing his US citizen wife once filed a protective order against him.
A Maryland judge has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to bring Mr Ábrego García back to the US. But El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said on a visit to the White House this week that he did not “have the power” to return him.
This Republican administration is doing everything in its power to establish the precedent that it can disappear whoever it wants into a foreign prison over which even the leader of that nation claims to have no aithority, and further that it can do so whenever it wants, for any reason it wants, entirelybregardless of any other governmental ruling, including a direct court order.
Very obviously, this is not a power that an office in a nation of liberty and justice should ever possess, for any reason, ever.
One would think that Republicans would be particularly determined in their opposition to that, rather than being the ones responsible for it.
This is insane. They just keep lying about this guy, even after admitting they were wrong, in court. You can’t tell the truth to a judge and then walk out of the courtroom and say the opposite to the media outside. What the fuck?