JUST IN: Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return ‘wasn’t my decision,’ Trump says.
President Donald Trump said Saturday that the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — the Salvadoran man who was illegally deported in March — was not his decision.
“That wasn’t my decision,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News. “The Department of Justice decided to do it that way.”
Abrego Garcia was flown back to the United States on Friday to face federal human trafficking charges in Tennessee, after prosecutors unveiled the indictment this week. It comes months after the Trump administration admitted it had mistakenly deported him — which the Supreme Court declared was illegal, ordering the government to “facilitate” his return — leading to an intense political and legal firestorm throughout the country over the ethics of the administration’s mass deportation policy.