Trump Distances Himself From Abrego Garcia’s Imprisonment: ‘I’m Not Involved In It’
President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter in the Oval Office on Thursday if he would “take steps” to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. if a court found him in contempt. The Trump administration had previously acknowledged it deported and indefinitely imprisoned Abrego Garcia in El Salvador by “error,” but continues to allege he is an MS-13 gang member — despite a judge and various fact checks shooting down the evidence backing the claim.
“If the court holds you in contempt, will you take steps to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States and put him in front of a judge?” a reporter asked Trump – referring to a recent court ruling that a federal judge is moving forward with contempt proceedings. The Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.
“Well, I’m not involved in it. I’m going to respond by saying you’ll have to speak to the lawyers, the DOJ. I’ve heard many things about him, and we’ll have to find out what the truth is,” Trump replied, distancing himself from the growing scandal, adding:
But I will say this, you know, we were inundated by millions of people, many millions of people during the Biden administration. They say 21 million. A big percentage of those are criminals, serious criminals. I’m not saying just criminals because they came into the border illegally.
I’m saying they’re criminals at the highest level, murderers. Many of those people murdered more than one person, and they’re on the loose. And I was elected to get rid of those criminals to get them out of our country, or to put them away, but to get them out of country. And I don’t see how judges can take that authority away from a president. We’ve done an amazing job. Tom Homan, Kristi Noem. We have done an amazingly good job.
Nobody can believe the job we’ve done. Far greater than what I said. I mean, I got elected on that, but we’ve done much better. We have, right now, 99 percent border. It’s a 99 percent. Nobody thought that would even be — nobody’s coming through our border, practically. Two weeks ago, we had nine people come through, all for medical reasons. We allowed them. We brought them through because — One had a heart attack, one had something else. All for medical reasons. We have a great border. We had a great border four years ago, but we have a border now that’s even tighter. And we did that in a matter of weeks. And now we have to — we need — we need to get murderers and drug dealers and people that were in jail for horrible — you know, they released prisoners from jails, from Georgia, from all over the world, and we listen.
Not just South America, all over the world. The Congo and Africa. Many, many people come from the Congo. I don’t know what that is, but they came from the Congo and all over the world they came in, opened their jails. Venezuela, practically all of their prisoners released into our country. We took them because we had an incompetent administration called the Biden administration. And to think what they’ve done to our country, and I was elected to straighten that out. And I’m doing that, but we have activist judges that don’t want murderers to be sent out of our country.
They don’t want killers and drug dealers and drug lords and people from mental institutions. They want them to stay in our country, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the liberal way, or as they call it nowadays, the progressive way. But I don’t think it’s the way that our country believes, and that’s why I won in a landslide.
Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.
