White House senior counterterrorism official Sebastian Gorka on Tuesday defended the Trump administration's decision to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran illegal alien deported last month.
Gorka called it a matter of national security and common sense, adding that this specific case, as Garcia is allegedly a member of MS-13, is a clear-cut issue.
“Well, the question is solved. At so many levels. Number one, this individual is a foreign national who came here illegally. So that's your first two strikes. Then we find out he's a member of an organization that we recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization. So, three strikes, and you're out,” Gorka told Newsmax.
Gorka added that the left is defending Garcia. In 2018, a judge ruled that Garcia could not be deported since there were credible fears that rival gang members in El Salvador would go after him, but the recent designation of MS-13 as a terrorist group brought the issue back to the forefront.
“It's quite telling that we have Democrats on Capitol Hill — not just the lunatics who are torching Tesla dealerships in acts of terrorism themselves — saying, ‘oh my gosh, the rights of this individual,’” Gorka said. “You mean, the terrorist who came here illegally? And that individual who said, ‘I can't go home because one gang that I'm not a member of wants to kill me because I am a member of another gang?’ Seriously, if you read this in a fictional novel 10 years ago, you'd say absolutely absurd. This is where we are today.”
Gorka continued speaking about leftists and the Democrat Party’s siding with Garcia, saying that, “I came up with this over a year ago when I had my show on Newsmax, and I realized that the taxonomy of politics in America is dead. It's not left and right. It's not Republican or Democrat. There's a line that divides us. Do you love America, or do you hate America? And we have people who love America, like the president, like his cabinet, like the directors of his agencies who want to protect Americans. And then there is the other side that is on the side of the cartel members, the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists.”
“You have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute,” Gorka continued.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Garcia always would have been deported no matter what.
“There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who is going to live a peaceful life in Maryland. Because he is a foreign terrorist and an MS-13 gang member. Not only have we confirmed that [El Salvador] President [Nayib] Bukele yesterday in the Oval Office confirmed that as well,” Leavitt said.