Attorney general says mistakenly deported man is ‘not coming back to our country’

Attorney General Pam Bondi backed the Trump administration’s stance on Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s deportation, saying he is “not coming back to our country.”

“If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back,” Bondi said, referring to El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele. “There was no situation ever where he was going to stay in this country.”

Bondi added: “He’s in El Salvador, and that’s where the president plans on keeping him.”

President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social today that it’s his job to remove “killers and thugs” from the United States, in apparent defense of his administration’s tactics in deporting those who it says are undocumented foreign terrorists and criminals.

Vice President JD Vance more deliberately defended the deportations of undocumented immigrants and questioned calls for due process, while continuing to claim Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, in several posts on X last night. Vance is posting in a back-and-forth on the topic with two users this morning.

More context: US officials have alleged that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which the Trump administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. His attorneys, however, dispute the claim, and at least one federal judge has voiced skepticism toward it.

The Trump administration conceded in a court filing earlier this month that it mistakenly deported him to El Salvador “because of an administrative error.”

CNN’s Devan Cole and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this post.