A Department of Homeland Security official on Monday compared Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant whom the Trump administration admitted it deported in error, to Osama bin Laden.
Speaking to Fox News, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Monday that “this illegal alien is exactly where he belongs, home in El Salvador,” referring to Abrego Garcia’s detention in El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a prison known for human rights abuses.
“He was in our country illegally, he’s from El Salvador, was born in El Salvador, and oh, the media forgot to mention, he is an MS-13 gang member,” McLaughlin said. “The media would love for you to believe that this is a media darling, he’s just some Maryland father. Well, Osama bin Laden was also a father, and yet he wasn’t a good guy, and they actually are both terrorists.”
DHS official Tricia McLaughling compares Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Obama bin Laden pic.twitter.com/YuBjGWxryz
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2025
Abrego Garcia is neither a terrorist nor a member of MS-13. In fact, an immigration judge ruled in 2019 that his life would be in danger if he were to return to El Salvador. In contrast, bin Laden co-founded Al Qaeda, responsible for several terrorist attacks around the world and thousands of deaths, including 2,996 people in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The fact that the Trump administration continues to lie and call Abrego Garcia a gang member and terrorist with no evidence to justify its defiance of a Supreme Court ruling to facilitate his return, is an egregious miscarriage of justice and slander of an innocent man. Abrego Garcia has no criminal record, is married to a U.S. citizen, and is the father of an autistic child. He deserves to return to the U.S., but the Trump administration doesn’t want to admit that it’s wrong.
Despite a court order, Donald Trump is still refusing to allow journalists from the Associated Press into the White House press pool.
On Monday, the AP was barred from the White House to cover Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s meeting with Trump, and issued a statement saying, “Our journalists were blocked from the Oval Office today. We expect the White House to restore AP’s participation in the pool as of today, as provided in the injunction order.”
Last week, a federal judge ruled that the president couldn’t bar the AP from presidential events, saying, “Under the First Amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less.”
Trump barred the AP in February from the Oval Office and Air Force One because the news agency refused to adopt Trump’s unilateral name change of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” The AP responded by suing three administration officials on the grounds that the White House was violating the Constitution’s free press protections by trying to dictate the AP’s language.
The president’s refusal to allow the AP access to the White House on Monday escalates the matter further, as the organization would have to seek further redress in court. It’s the latest example of Trump’s attempts to intimidate and force media organizations to bend to his will, be it threatening legal action through the FCC or defamation lawsuits, or taking the unprecedented move of wresting control of the press pool away from the White House Correspondents’ Association.
The administration is already defying larger court orders, such as those against its immigration practices, with nothing seemingly compelling it to follow the law, creating a constitutional crisis. This move against the AP is a direct assault on the First Amendment, and, barring any sort of penalty against the Trump administration, is a major blow to free speech and freedom of the press in America.
More on Trump (& co.) ignoring court orders:
Donald Trump plans to send as many people as he can to megaprisons in El Salvador.
In a press conference with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele Monday, Trump was asked how many “illegal criminals” he plans to export to El Salvador.
“As many as possible,” the president responded. “As many as we can get out of our country that were allowed in here by incompetent Joe Biden, through open borders.… We have millions of people that should not be in this country that are dangerous.… We have millions of people that are murderers, drug dealers.”
But the majority of the more than 200 immigrants he’s already sent to El Salvador were not murderers or drug dealers. They were ordinary people without criminal records, victim to the Trump administration’s baseless lies about their pasts.
Andry Hernandez Romero was a makeup artist who loved to do theater, Jerce Reyes Barrios was a soccer player whose innocent tattoo was flagged as a Tren de Aragua gang symbol by the Department of Homeland Security, Alirio Guillermo was a food delivery driver in Utah without a criminal record. They are now being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, a megaprison notorious for human rights abuses.
Trump and Bukele’s meeting comes as the White House claims it is not obligated to return Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was illegally deported to El Salvador, despite the Supreme Court ordering it facilitate his return.
The Supreme Court also ruled that the government must give enough notice to immigrant detainees to dispute their deportation, but the Trump administration clearly doesn’t care.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that another 10 migrants had been deported to El Salvador. Meanwhile, the president continues his threats to deport U.S. citizens to the megaprison.
“The alliance between @POTUS and President @nayibbukele has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere,” Rubio wrote in a post on X. It’s a terrifying indication that the president plans to deport as many people as he can, and Bukele, who has jailed 1 percent of his own people, will happily do the same to anybody Trump sends his way.