Vice President JD Vance blasted Democrats and the media over their outrage at the deportation of "Maryland father" Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged MS-13 gang member.
"Back in 2019, an immigration judge looked at all the evidence, looked at the data and concluded that this allegedly innocent person that we sent to El Salvador was actually a member of an MS-13 gang,” Vance told Fox News. “He had also committed some traffic violations. He had not shown up for some court dates. This is not exactly ‘Father of the Year’ here. This is a person that we don't think should be in our country.”
“Not even the crazy left-wing media criticized the idea that we could deport this person," he continued. "They just took issue with the reasoning for why we deported this person."
The White House remained firm in their decision to deport Abrego Garcia following a report from The Atlantic that federal attorneys said that there was an "administrative error" in bringing him to CECOT men’s prison in El Salvador.
Court filings also show Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. in 2011 at the age of 16 after fleeing gang threats in El Salvador, the outlet reported.
Eight years later, a judge granted him a form of protected status known as "withholding of removal" after finding that he would likely be a target of Salvadoran gangs if deported to his native country.
News of his deportation ignited outrage among Democrats, leaving Vance to blast the group for allegedly showing more sympathy toward illegal immigrants than for murdered U.S. citizens like Georgia nursing student Laken Riley and Texas native Jocelyn Nungaray. (Fox News)
Vance said the administration will continue with its deportation efforts regardless of the pushback.
"We do not ask permission from far-left Democrats before we deport illegal immigrants. We do the American people's business," he said.
"This is such a weird, mistaken placement of priorities… What is it about congressional Democrats that get more angry at deporting violent gang members than they do at the victims of those violent gang members? I don't even understand where they're coming from. They've gone off the deep end, and they've got to come back to reality."
Vice President JD Vance on illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego García: “This was unquestionably an illegal alien. This was unquestionably a person who broke the laws to get into our country. This was unquestionably a person an immigration judge had found had zero right to be in the… pic.twitter.com/ASpVOqyhWb
— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) April 4, 2025
On Friday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia.