‘I Don’t Think He’s Coming Back, Basically Ever’: Jeffrey Toobin Gives Grim Prediction for Fate of Mistakenly Deported Man
Jeffrey Toobin is not optimistic that Kilmar Abrego Garcia will be returned to the U.S. after the Trump administration said it mistakenly deported the Salvadoran national.
A sheet metal worker with three children, Abrego Garcia was arrested in Baltimore last month and deported to El Salvador where he is currently incarcerated at the notorious CECOT prison in the country. He was one of more than 260 people the Trump administration deported to El Salvador for incarceration with little or no due process.
After alleging Abrego Garcia is a member of the infamous MS-13 gang, lawyers for the government said he was deported because of an “administrative error.” Incredibly, President Donald Trump and his administration have doubled down and insisted Abrego Garcia is a “terrorist.” Trump is currently defying the federal judiciary, which has instructed him to retrieve Abrego Garcia. The president maintains the decision is up to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
On Monday, Trump hosted Bukele in the White House and was overheard telling his Latin American counterpart to build more prisons for “homegrowns,” or American citizens Trump seemingly plans to deport to El Salvador.
Toobin, a former federal prosecutor, appeared on CNN on Monday and John Berman asked if such a move would be “remotely constitutional.”
“Not as far as I’m aware,” Toobin said. “There are laws about how we punish people in this country. Title 18 of the United States Code defines criminal laws in this country, defines the kinds of punishment. And there is not included in Title 18, ‘Send someone out of the country,’ much less to a hellhole prison in another country. It just doesn’t exist, that authority.”
“Totally agree,” echoed former U.S. District Judge Shira Sheindlin. You cannot do that. But this president seems to want to push the limits of power and see how far he can get.”
Later in the segment, Toobin pointed to remarks by White House adviser Stephen Miller.
“He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador,” Miller said in the Oval Office hours earlier. “This was the right person sent to the right place.”
“They are now trying to present Mr. Abrego Garcia as the criminal that the government acknowledged just a few days ago that he wasn’t,” said Toobin, who went on to say that although the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling calling for the deportee to be returned, the high court is loath for a confrontation.
“I also think they do not want an international confrontation that they cause,” he said. “And they will be very deferential if El Salvador says, ‘We are simply not turning him over.’ I bet this Supreme Court will say, ‘Well, there’s nothing that can be done in that case.'”
“You don’t think this man is coming back?” Berman asked.
“I don’t think he’s coming back, basically ever,” Toobin replied.
“I’m still hopeful,” Sheindlin opined.
Watch above via CNN.
