'Bin Laden was also a father': DHS official compares wrongly-deported dad to terrorist
Department of Homeland Security assistant public affairs secretary Tricia McLaughlin doubled down on the accidental deportation of Maryland family man Kilmar Ábrego García to a Salvadoran megaprison on Fox News' "The Will Cain Show" Monday — baselessly claiming that García is a known gang member and even comparing him to al-Qaeda founder and Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Despite the Trump administration's attorneys admitting the deportation had been in error in court documents, and despite the Supreme Court upholding a lower court order to "facilitate" Ábrego García's return, President Donald Trump and El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, boasted in a White House meeting earlier in the day that no such return would happen.
McLaughlin defended the refusal in her interview on Fox News.
"Let's start with the case that everyone asks about ... the quote-unquote 'Maryland man' Ábrego García. What then does that leave his status? It seems it would be his status will remain in El Salvador."
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"Well, I think that this illegal alien is exactly where he belongs, home in El Salvador," said McLaughlin. "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. The media would love for you to believe that this is a media darling, that 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."
Ábrego García has never been convicted of any crimes, including gang-related crimes. He was accused of being a gang member without evidence by a third-party police informant in 2019 and spent a year in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention before being exonerated in an immigration hearing. Moreover, he is married to an American citizen with two children.
Despite all of this, Vice President JD Vance echoed the false claim Ábrego García was a gang member and even falsely claimed he was "determined" to be one in 2019 by an immigration judge "under the Biden administration." Aside from the claim itself, Joe Biden didn't become president until January 2021.