‘Obvious Injustice’: National Review Demands Kilmar Abrego Garcia Be Rescued from Prison in El Salvador

(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

National Review demanded that the Trump administration remedy an “obvious injustice” and rescue Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the prison in El Salvador it sent him to in an editorial published on Monday.

Abrego Garcia was taken into custody by ICE last month and promptly deported to El Salvador, where he is being held in a maximum security prison despite the fact that he is married to a U.S. citizen. The administration has justified its actions by claiming that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, even though he has not been charged with a crime in connection with gang activity.

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has backed up a lower court order calling for Abrego Garcia’s return. But the administration has maintained that it no longer has jurisdiction over his fate.

The National Review editorial began with an acknowledgment that The court fight over Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is a most unusual one in that no one denies that the government violated the law in deporting him.”

“Abrego Garcia is deportable, and should be deported, but a judge had ruled, in connection with 2019 proceedings over his time-barred asylum claim, that he couldn’t be sent to El Salvador. Sure enough, we sent him to El Salvador, and not just anywhere in that Latin American country but to the most notorious prison in the Western Hampshire, the so-called Terrorist Confinement Center, or CECOT,” it continued. “This is an obvious injustice that could be easily remedied by bringing Abrego Garcia back. The administration maintains that this is impossible because it sent him to a foreign jail run by the government of El Salvador, not the United States. This is a ridiculous pretense because the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, will clearly do anything we ask.”

“Abrego Garcia’s claim that he fears persecution from another gang in El Salvador is likely bogus. This, along with the government’s sketchy claim that he is a member of MS-13, should all be sorted out via a lawful process here in the United States,” concluded the conservative magazine. “The administration can bring him back the easy and correct way — as soon as possible — or play a losing hand in the courts while someone we never should have sent there sweats out his days in CECOT.”