Trump’s fixation on wrongly deported man’s tattoos nothing but a distraction, says lawyer

It doesn’t matter what kind of tattoos Kilmar Abrego Garcia has, says his lawyer.

What matters, says Rina Gandhi, is that her client was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, where he remains imprisoned without charge despite two court orders that the U.S. government work to bring him back. 

U.S. President Trump has skirted those orders while painting Garcia has a violent gangster, pointing to his knuckle tattoos as proof. 

“His character, whether he is deserving — which is what the administration is attempting to push forward as the narrative that we should care about — is not relevant,”  Gandhi told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.

“If the government will not make good faith efforts to bring him back in accordance with the Supreme Court order, with the district court order, then I think we should all be concerned and wondering, you know, who’s next?”

Conflicting statements from Trump administration

Garcia, a Salvadorian migrant who lives in Maryland with his wife and three children, was detained on March 14 and questioned about his alleged involvement with the gang MS-13, which the U.S. State Department has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. 

His lawyers deny he has any gang affiliations. He has not been charged with any crimes. 

Garcia was sent to El Salvador on March 15, despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to the country. The Trump administration later admitted it was an administrative error. 

A Maryland district judge ordered the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” Garcia’s immediate return, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling. 

The U.S. administration has repeatedly insisted Garcia’s fate is out of their hands, and only Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has the power to release him.

But, in an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News on Tuesday, Trump conceded that he could get Garcia released and returned with a simple phone call if he wanted to. 

“They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth,” Gandhi said. “It’s frustrating, and I don’t have a good answer of how we kind of make sense of these conflicting statements.”

She accused the administration of “trying slander this man’s name and put everything out in the media but, you know, not put anything in a real court.”

“That’s not the approach that I believe in, and that’s not the system I believe in,” she said. 

Knuckle tattoos

In that same ABC interview, Trump insisted that Garcia has an MS-13 tattoo on his knuckles. 

Photos of Garcia show that he has four symbols on his knuckles: A leaf, a smiley face, a cross and a skull. Several experts have said the tattoos are not evidence of gang affilation.

On social media, Trump has repeatedly shared a photo of himself holding up a printed photo of Garcia’s knuckle tattoos with “M S 1 3” superimposed over the photo in digital text, each character corresponding with one of the tattoos.

In his interview with Moran, Trump insisted the photos he shared were unaltered, seeming to imply Garcia literally had the gang’s name tattooed on his knuckles. 

When Moran tried to correct the record, Trump interjected: “MS-13. It says MS-13.”

Gandhi says she can’t confirm one way or the other what tattoos her client has, because she and her colleagues have been “denied any access to him.”

Asked how he’s doing behind bars, she said: “I would love to tell you. The true answer is I don’t know. I find out information about him much the same as you.”

Domestic abuse allegations

Trump and his officials have also accused Garcia of domestic violence, citing a 2021 protective order petition filed by his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, which accused him of physically assaulting her. 

Sura said in a statement on April 16 that she decided to drop the petition, and that she and her husband “were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counselling,” reports BBC News.

She has championed his cause since his deportation. 

“He was illegally detained, abducted and disappeared by the Trump administration, though they admitted it was an error,” Sura said Wednesday during a protest in Washington, D.C. “For everyone watching, keep fighting.”

The Democrats, meanwhile, have taken up Garcia’s case, with Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen visiting him last month in El Salvador.

Democratic senators have introduced a resolution to force the administration to report to Congress about what steps it is taking to comply with courts, and another to compel a U.S. State Department review of human rights issues in El Salvador.

The Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans, to El Salvador in recent months under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, accusing them of being gang members without evidence or trial.

A U.S. federal judge ruled the deportations were “beyond the scope of the law.”

Gandhi says that, despite how head-spinning this case has been, she believes the rule of law will prevail, and her client will be released. 

“I think we all should believe in that because that’s what our society is built on. If we give up on that, and we don’t keep pushing for that, what are we left with?”