Trump Team Makes Stunning Admission About Deportations—and It’s Awful

The Trump administration has admitted that it mistakenly deported a man to a notorious prison in El Salvador due to an “administrative error,” despite the government’s repeated insistence that there were no errors in their flight determinations.

A sworn statement filed late Tuesday from a top Immigration and Customs official said that the removal of Kilmer Armado Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorean national, had been the result of an “administrative error.”

In 2019, Abrego Garcia was arrested, and although he was not charged with anything, he was served a notice to appear at removal proceedings. At the time, Abrego Garcia was denied bond because a confidential informant advised that he was a member of MS-13, according to the filing. No actual evidence of Abrego Garcia’s gang membership was provided. He was not, as Vice President JD Vance suggested on X, a “convicted” member of MS-13.

Abrego Garcia then filed an I-589 application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. He had come to the U.S. in 2011, fleeing threats of gang violence at the age of 16, according to The Atlantic.

Although he was found to be removable, the immigration judge granted him a “withholding of removal,” a protected legal status meaning he could not be deported to El Salvador, where he would likely become a target for gang violence.

Abrego Garcia was released from custody and has been living in Maryland with his wife and 5-year-old child, who is disabled. He and his wife work full-time to support their family.

Robert Cerna, an acting field office director at the Harlingnen Field Office in Texas, where the flights ferrying 261 alleged gang members to El Salvador were staged, said in a statement that Abrego Garcia should not have been included in the flight manifest and that ICE was well aware of the hold on his removal, as it was referred to on internal forms.

Still, Abrego Garcia was included as an “alternate” for removal, Cerna said. “As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that Abrego Garcia should not be removed.”

“Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13.”

A judge denied his family’s request for an injunction because the U.S. no longer has custody of Abrego Garcia, who now wrongfully sits in Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a Salvadoran prison notorious for human rights abuses.

Vance went on the defensive Tuesday morning, repeatedly claiming in posts on X that an immigration judge had determined that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, but again he got his facts wrong.

“In 2019, an Immigration Judge (under the Biden administration) determined that the deported man was, in fact, a member of the MS-13 gang,” Vance wrote, apparently forgetting that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, was president from 2016 to 2021.

“He also apparently had multiple traffic violations for which he failed to appear in court. A real winner,” Vance continued, as if that somehow made Abrego Garcia a worthy candidate for torture and gang violence.

Elon Musk and DOGE just soft-fired everyone at the federal agency that supports local libraries and museums nationwide. 

All 70 Institute of Museum and Library Services employees were sent an email on Monday placing them on an immediate paid administrative leave, according to the American Federation of Government Employees union. 

This comes just two weeks after President Trump signed an executive order calling for IMLS to be shut down, and days after DOGE operatives infiltrated the IMLS facility while purging its leadership. 

“Earlier today, the Institute of Museum and Library Services notified the entire staff that they are being placed on administrative leave immediately. The notification followed a brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership,” a statement from AFGE  read. “Employees were required to turn in all government property prior to exiting the building, and email accounts are being disabled today. Museums and libraries will no longer be able to contact IMLS staff for updates about the funding they rely upon.”

The IMLS has a $313 million annual budget and distributes taxpayer money to museums and libraries across the country. Its stated goal is to “advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.”

“In the absence of staff, all work processing 2025 applications has ended,” AFGE noted. “The status of previously awarded grants is unclear. Without staff to administer the programs, it is likely that most grants will be terminated.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reckless treatment of classified information has left the majority of voters thinking that he should resign, according to a poll published Monday.

A poll by J.L. Partners for the Daily Mail found that 54 percent of voters believed that Hegseth should resign over his involvement in the recent Signalgate scandal.

While all of the senior Trump officials who were members in the nonsecure group chat failed to notice the presence of Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, as they discussed a strike against the Houthis, it was Hegseth alone who sent details about the timing of the attacks—definitionally classified information.

Twenty-four percent of respondents said they weren’t sure what he should do, while only 22 percent said he should remain in his post.

Republicans were slightly more likely to back Hegseth, but not by much. Only 38 percent said he should stay, but 33 percent said he should go. The rest were not sure. Meanwhile, 54 percent of independents said he should resign, while 22 said he should remain in office.

Respondents seemed slightly aggressive about Mike Waltz, Donald Trump’s national security adviser who mistakenly added Goldberg to the group chat. Forty-seven percent of respondents wanted Walz to resign, while only 21 percent said he should stay. Waltz has struggled to explain the immense gaffe, and most recently claimed that the editor’s number had simply been “sucked in” to his phone.

Although the Trump administration seems interested in sweeping the national security slipup under the rug, Republicans are increasingly primed to paint Hegseth as the major culprit in Signalgate.

One senior Republican official told Politico after Signalgate that “privately, there is a lot of concern about his judgment, more than with Waltz,” in Washington. The former Fox & Friends co-host’s judgment was previously questioned when allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking were brought to light after he was tapped to lead the Pentagon.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt flailed Monday when asked about the government’s shady system for classifying gang members. Desperate to dodge the question, Leavitt went on a tirade claiming that the reporter had no right to ask about it in the first place.

Outside of the White House, the Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg attempted to ask Leavitt about how immigration authorities had been designating individuals as members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and therefore potentially subject to deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. 

Documents in a new court filing from the government stated that for an individual to be classified as a member of TdA, all they need to do is be a Venezeulan person older than 14 years and  score eight points on a survey of different characteristics, including having symbols in their tattoos or wearing certain logos, which were worth four points each. Feinberg did the math. 

“You can get classified by simply having certain symbols in your tattoos and wearing certain streetwear brands—that alone is enough to get someone classified as TdA and sent to El Salvador,” Feinberg said. 

“That’s not true, actually, Andrew,” Leavitt snapped. Feinberg insisted he was simply reading from court documents filed by the government. 

“No, according to Department of Homeland Security and the agents—have you talked to the agents who have been putting their lives on the line to detain these foreign terrorists who have been terrorizing our communities?” Leavitt asked. 

“I–I’m not denying that—” Feinberg said, but Leavitt continued.

“TdA is a vicious gang that has taken the lives of American women, and our agents on the front lines take up deporting these people with the utmost seriousness, and there is a litany of criteria that they use to ensure that these individuals qualify as foreign terrorists, and to ensure, to ensure that they qualify for deportation,” she said. 

“And shame on you, and shame on the mainstream media for trying to cover for these individuals who have—this is a vicious gang, Andrew! This is a vicious gang that has taken the lives of American women!”

“I’m not trying to cover for anyone,” Feinberg insisted, but Leavitt continued to attack Feinberg for even asking about the documents, once again unable to account for the government she purports to represent.

“And you said yourself there are eight criteria on that document! And you are questioning the credibility of these agents who are putting their life on the line to protect your life, and the life of everybody in this group and the life of everybody across the country? And their credibility should be questioned? They finally have a president who is allowing them to do their jobs, and God bless them for doing it,” Leavitt fumed.

Unfortunately for Leavitt, she works with the very journalists who are responsible for asking questions about the government’s wrongdoings—and when it comes to Donald Trump’s mass deportations, there seem to have been some significant ones. 

New documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union on Sunday showed that the tattoos ICE is using to identify individuals as TdA gang members included a range of innocuous images such as the Jordan “Jumpman” logo, a crown, a train, and a clock, among other things. Representatives for at least three of the people deported earlier this month claim that they were wrongly classified as gang members over their tattoos. 

Because the 261 detainees deported to El Salvador earlier this month were removed under the AEA, they were stripped of due process and the opportunity to legally challenge their designation as TdA members. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that another 17 individuals were deported there on Tuesday, alleging that they were members of MS-13 and TdA—possibly violating a court order. 

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is insisting that the media is overreacting to Donald Trump’s theories about staying in office for a third term. Speaking with reporters on Monday, Leavitt seemed to suggest that there was no merit to the idea, or the media’s alarm over it—despite the fact that Trump said he is “not joking” about staying in power.

“Look, you guys continue to ask a question about a third term, and then he answers honestly and candidly with a smile and then everyone here melts down about his answer,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt then pointed to Trump’s interview with reporters aboard Air Force One over the weekend—in which the president raised the idea that “people” were prompting him to run again—as the reason why Americans should not be worried about the unconstitutional effort.

“I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term because the other election—the 2020 election—was totally rigged,” Trump said. “I just don’t want the credit for the second because Biden was so bad, did such a bad job, and I think that’s one of the reasons that I’m popular.… I think we’ve had the best almost hundred days of any president.”

But during a Sunday morning phone call with NBC News’s Kristin Welker, the president insisted that he was actually very serious and “not joking” about potentially circumventing the Constitution in order to lead the country for another four years after his second term ends.

“No, no I’m not joking. I’m not joking,” the president said, during a call in which he agreed with Welker that one such plan to keep him in office involved having Vice President JD Vance front the next Republican presidential ticket with Trump as his number two—roles that they would then switch once back in office.

“That’s one. But there are others too. There are others,” Trump said, refusing to clarify what the other plans are.

The seemingly far-fetched and unconstitutional idea would require the consent of most of the country—if Trump attempted to use traditional methods to stay in the Oval Office.

As outlined in Article 5 of the Constitution, any such change requires at least two-thirds of the Senate and the House to agree on the modification, with that change then requiring ratification by a minimum of three-quarters of states in the nation.

A second approach to repealing the term-limiting amendment could be via a Constitutional Convention, though two-thirds of states would need to support the motion to have one at all, and any proposed changes to an amendment would still require ratification by three-fourths of the states.