Ice Admits 'administrative Error' In Deporting Maryland Man To El Salvador

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 federal custody in the United States because of alleged gang ties.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials admitted in a court filing on Monday night to an "administrative error" in deporting the 29-year-old man, generating immediate uproar from immigration advocates.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was arrested on March 12 after completing a shift as a sheet metal worker apprentice at a construction site in Baltimore, according to a complaint filed in federal court by his lawyers.

Abrego Garcia was then sent to a notorious prison in his home country , the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which activists say is rife with abuses and where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside.

He was placed at CECOT despite an immigration judge's ruling in 2019 that he not be deported to El Salvador because he had established it was "more likely than not that he would be persecuted by gangs," according to his lawyer's complaint.