Inside Trump Officials’ Debate Over Abrego Garcia’s Deportation

A mistake had been made. That much was clear.

The Trump administration had deported a Maryland man named Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to a prison in El Salvador, even though a judge had issued a ruling expressly prohibiting that from happening.

But when the news reached the Department of Homeland Security, it set off a dayslong scramble and clashes among officials in three different agencies over how to deal with what everyone knew had been an error. As it became clear that keeping it quiet was not an option, D.H.S. officials floated a series of ideas to control the story that raised alarms among Justice Department lawyers on the case.

In the days before the government’s error became public, D.H.S. officials discussed trying to portray Mr. Abrego Garcia as a “leader” of the violent street gang MS-13, even though they could find no evidence to support the claim. They considered ways to nullify the original order that barred his deportation to El Salvador. They sought to downplay the danger he might face in one of that country’s most notorious prisons.

And in the end, a senior Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, who counseled bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States, was fired for what Attorney General Pam Bondi said was a failure to “zealously advocate on behalf of the United States.”

Documents obtained by The New York Times laying out the debate among leading lawyers at the State, Justice and Homeland Security Departments reveal new details of the administration’s early efforts to develop a strategy for a case that has become a major test of President Trump’s mass deportation effort.

The discussions do not directly capture any conversations about the case inside the White House or at the level of the relevant cabinet secretaries. But the documents show how Trump officials, from the start, tried to keep Mr. Abrego Garcia out of the reach of the American judicial system.