Karoline Leavitt Pulls a 180 After ICE Admits It Deported Wrong Guy

The Trump administration is continuing to lie about the Venezuelan nationals they deported on claims they were all Tren de Aragua gang members.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Tuesday about the case of Kilmer Armado Abrego Garcia, the Maryland-based Salvadoran national who was deported to El Salvador earlier this month based on a “clerical error.” 

“The administration has expressed a complete confidence in how all the deportations flights to El Salvador were conducted,” a reporter asked Leavitt. “But now that the administration has conceded that there was an error of one Salvadoran national, will there be any reviews conducted, and does the president express any thoughts on the one error that was disclosed in court last night?”  

“Well first of all, the error that you are referring to was based on a clerical error, it was an administrative error. The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang,” Leavitt replied. “That is fact number one. Fact number two: We also have credible intelligence proving that this individual was involved in human trafficking. And fact number three: This individual was a member, actually a leader, of the brutal MS-13 gang, which this president has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.” 

Leavitt admits Abrego Garcia’s deportation was a “clerical error” while simultaneously claiming that he is some evil MS-13 mastermind. What’s most likely is that the Trump administration sent another immigrant to rot in a brutal megaprison without any due process.  

“You said you’d seen evidence that this man was a convicted gang member. In what court was he convicted and for what?” a different reporter followed up. 

“This individual was an MS-13 ring leader. This individual was engaged in human trafficking. And I’m glad you brought up this point again, because if you just saw the headline from insane, failing Atlantic magazine this morning, you would think this individual was father of the year, living in Maryland, living a peaceful life when that couldn’t be further from the truth. They didn’t even mention in the title of that article, or even in the first paragraph, that this individual is an illegal criminal who broke our nation’s immigration laws. He is a leader in the brutal MS-13 gang, and he is involved in human trafficking. And now MS-13 is a designated foreign terrorist organization.” 

Leavitt rambled on spitefully, coming nowhere close to answering the basic question she was asked about which court identified Abrego Garcia as a leader of MS-13.

As the Trump administration continues to face mounting legal challenges to its mass deportation of alleged members of Tren de Aragua, who were identified over their supposedly incriminating tattoos, experts on the Venezuelan gang said that the group doesn’t have identifying tattoos at all.

To classify individuals as gang members, immigration officials used an “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” that works on a points-based system. Venezuelan nationals over the age of 14 needed to score eight points to be deemed a member of TdA, and according to the guide, tattoos were worth a whopping four points.

But experts on the gang told The New Yorker that tattoos aren’t really a TdA signifier.

“The truth is that a tattoo identifying Tren de Aragua does not exist,” Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who published the definitive book on TdA, told the magazine. “Tren de Aragua does not use any tattoos as a form of gang identification; no Venezuelan gang does.”

Rísquez said that tattoos were by no means a reliable way to determine whether someone was gang-affiliated. “Most young people in Latin America these days have tattoos,” she said, adding that “people get a tattoo because it means something particular to them.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever encountered any reference to the significance of tattoos,” said Andrés Antillano, a criminology professor at the Central University of Venezuela, who spent much of his career studying TdA. He called this thinking “absurd” and “naïve.”

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.

Andry José Hernández Romero, a 38-year-old makeup artist, was classified as a member of TdA based on crown tattoos on his wrists that immigration authorities claimed were a “determining factors to conclude reasonable suspicion.” The crowns were adorned with the words “Mom” and “Dad.”

Being identified based on their tattoos has emerged as a through line between the individuals who were deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador on March 15. Representatives for at least three of the people deported last month claimed that their clients were wrongly classified as gang members over their tattoos.

A judge ordered a pause on deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, which was used to remove alleged gang members without due process, and another judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country. Still, the government has continued to remove alleged members of TdA and MS-13.

It looks like Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is trying to award itself a $500 million building from one of the organizations it targeted.

Wired reports that DOGE is trying to transfer the United States Institute of Peace’s headquarters to the government’s General Services Administration free of charge. DOGE took over the USIP last month after a standoff with law enforcement and fired the agency’s 10 board members, despite the fact that it’s an independent nonprofit organization and is not part of the executive branch of government.

On Friday, most of the nonprofit’s employees received termination notices, despite a pending lawsuit from USIP officials against DOGE, President Trump, former USIP President Kenneth Jackson, and other administration officials. The institute was denied a temporary restraining order in federal court last month, although U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell criticized DOGE’s takeover of the nonprofit.

Last week, DOGE staffer Nate Cavanaugh replaced Jackson as acting president, according to court documents, and the lawsuit states that Cavanaugh was ordered to transfer USIP’s assets, including its headquarters, to the GSA. The lawsuit also cites a letter from Russell Vought, the head of the office of Office of Management and Budget and an author of Project 2025, seeking the transfer of the building at no cost.

Judge Howell will decide whether to allow the asset transfer in court Tuesday, according to Wired. But Vought and DOGE’s desire for the institute’s assets raise questions about their intentions for the building, which has a prime location near the Potomac River and the National Mall.

Jeremy Lewin, the newly appointed head of the remaining shreds of USAID, has a history of violent outbursts and making racist remarks, according to an exclusive report from Rolling Stone.

Before Lewin was installed as the agency’s chief operating officer earlier this month, he was DOGE’s team lead overseeing the gutting of USAID. Six people told Rolling Stone that when Lewin attended Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, a prestigious high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he expressed explicitly racist views.

“I have a vivid memory of him telling me that he believed non-white people were inherently of ‘lower value’ than white people,” said one former acquaintance who spoke with Rolling Stone. That person described Lewin as “blatantly racist.”

Others who knew him then said that he espoused ideas such as the “great replacement theory” and claimed that white people were biologically more intelligent than people of other races.

One former acquaintance told Rolling Stone that news of Lewin’s appointment gave them “chills.”

“I thought he had no empathy. He was fashy, misogynistic, [and] really believed Western civilization was superior. I can see him enjoying taking away humanitarian programs in Africa. It’s frightening. It’s like letting Hannibal Lecter mind kids or something,” they told the magazine.

In school, Lewin also had a penchant for violent outbursts, and allegedly threw things at other students. Outside of school he was violent too. One girl, who was a minor at the time, told police that she feared for her life after Lewin threatened her with a knife at a party, asking why “he shouldn’t gut [her] and cut [her] right now,” according to police reports.

The 18-year-old Lewin had a hearing scheduled on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, but it was ultimately canceled for unknown reasons, according to Rolling Stone.

Lewin went on to attend Dartmouth University and Harvard Law School, before clerking for Judge Judith Rogers, a progressive who was the first Black woman appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

His new position at USAID was announced as U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang barred DOGE from taking any actions at the agency without permission of a USAID official, ruling that DOGE’s efforts to shutter the agency likely violated the U.S. Constitution. Lewin’s appointment was likely an effort to skirt the order.

After the government asked the judge to exempt Lewin from the order, the judge amended his order to specifically include Lewin. Chuang said his order purposefully included “all individuals with a past or present affiliation” with DOGE to “address the most likely perpetrators of constitutional violations.”

“Excluding Lewin from this class would undermine these purposes,” Chuang wrote in his order.

Still, Lewin sent out a memo Friday announcing that the USAID would terminate the vast majority of its employees on either July 1 or September 2, likely violating Chuang’s direct order.

Donald Trump’s global tariff “Liberation Day” begins April 2—but European officials say that they have their own hand to play in the U.S. president’s trade war.

“Europe has not started this confrontation,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told lawmakers Tuesday at a European Parliament session in Strasbourg, France. “We do not necessarily want to retaliate, but if it is necessary, we have a strong plan to retaliate and we will use it.

“Europe holds a lot of cards, from trade to technology to the size of our market. But this strength is also built on our readiness to take firm counter measures if necessary. All instruments are on the table,” von der Leyen said.

The European Union is composed of 27 member countries, several of which have stood as America’s longest and strongest allies, including France, Germany, and Spain.

After Trump announced forthcoming aluminum and steel tariffs on the continental bloc, the EU said it would impose a $26 billion levy on imported U.S. goods.

Trump has also managed to shut American companies out of other deals with the international coalition, including the European Union’s $800 billion defense spending plan. That followed revelations that Canada and Portugal were similarly wobbling on whether to buy American when restocking their military arsenals.

But beyond nickels and dimes, Trump’s whiplash tariffs and his decision to spark a global trade war have critically damaged America’s image on the international stage, wrecking the nation’s relationships with its long-standing allies.

Even America’s northern neighbor has had enough: On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country’s cozy relationship with the U.S. had come to an end and that Canada would wean itself off American products and services “at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.”

But the EU is waiting to assess the impact of Trump’s tariffs before issuing more retaliatory tariffs, though von der Leyen is reportedly consulting with member states about another round—worth $18 billion—that would cover steel, aluminum, poultry, beef, seafood, and nuts, per The Guardian.

“So many Europeans feel utterly disheartened by the announcement from the United States,” von der Leyen said. “This is the largest and most prosperous trade relationship worldwide. We would all be better off if we could find a constructive solution.”