TECOLUCA, El Salvador (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting a Maryland man with protected legal status to a notorious El Salvador prison, but is arguing against returning him to the United States because of his alleged gang ties and the U.S. government’s lack of power over the Central American nation.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.
Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the U.S. more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes — and placed them inside the country’s maximum-security gang prison just outside of San Salvador. Garcia is one of them.
The arrival of the immigrants took place under an agreement for which the Trump administration will pay the government of President Nayib Bukele $6 million for one year of services.
Bukele has made the Central American country’s stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his fight against crime.
In 2023, he opened the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where the immigrants were sent.
This photo gallery curated by AP photo editors highlights a recent tour of the prison by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
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