Fox News host Jesse Watters criticized the Trump administration for bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States, saying the wrongly deported man’s return was like taking a rental car to the car wash.
“I don’t think they should have brought him back,” Watters said on The Five, shortly after news broke that Abrego Garcia is facing two counts of human smuggling in Tennessee.
“This is a national security situation. The guy is a designated terrorist. He belongs somewhere else. What are we going to do? We’re going to spend two years and $50 million trying this guy and imprisoning this guy, feeding him, giving him healthcare, and then flying him home?” Watters said incredulously.
“This is like renting a car and taking it to a car wash before you return it,” he added. “What’s the point? It’s not your car, and it’s going back anyway.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said Abrego Garcia would first serve time in a U.S. prison if convicted, then be removed from the country once again.
Garcia had been held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center even after the Trump administration admitted his deportation was an “administrative error.” When the Supreme Court ordered that it “facilitate” his return, the White House insisted that it was powerless to do so.
Friday’s events proved the administration was lying, The Five co-host Jessica Tarlov said Friday.
“[White House Press Secretary] Karoline Leavitt—as well as other members of the administration, from the president himself to Kristi Noem—lied to the American people when they said they couldn’t bring him back,” Tarlov said. “Well, I guess you could get him back.”
Andrew Rossman, a lawyer for Abrego Garcia, made the same point.
“Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along—that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,” he told The New York Times. “It’s now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees to all persons.”
Abrego Garcia was sent to Tennessee, where the indictment was filed in May and unsealed Friday.
The Times reports that an imprisoned man’s information about Abrego Garcia moved the case forward. Prosecutors couldn’t agree how to proceed, however, and one ended up resigning.
