The Trump administration isn’t rushing to bring home Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident whom the White House mistakenly shipped to El Salvador on the basis of his alleged involvement with the transnational Salvadoran gang MS-13. Instead, they seem intent on finding enough evidence to keep him out of the country for good.

The Justice Department has been quietly investigating a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop involving Abrego Garcia, and recently spoke with an Alabama inmate—Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes—who it believed had potential connections to the 29-year-old, ABC News reported Tuesday.

At the time of the traffic violation, Abrego Garcia was driving Hernandez-Reyes’s car. Abrego Garcia was ticketed for speeding. He had eight passengers in the vehicle and told officers that they had been working construction in Missouri, according to ABC.

Hernandez-Reyes reportedly told investigators that he operated a “taxi service” in Baltimore. Sources familiar with the conversation told ABC that Hernandez-Reyes said he met Abrego Garcia in 2015 and sometimes hired Abrego Garcia to transport undocumented immigrants from Texas to other areas of the country.

It’s not clear if Hernandez-Reyes’s testimony is enough to charge Abrego Garcia, but what is plain is that the White House is not prioritizing his return home.

“The interview of Hernandez-Reyes, however, appears to be a new and aggressive step in the government’s efforts to gather potentially incriminating information about Abrego Garcia’s background–even as it resists calls for him to be provided typical protections to respond to such accusations through the American legal system,” according to ABC News.

Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally more than a decade ago but was allowed to remain in the U.S. and evade deportation back to El Salvador when an immigration judge ruled in October 2019 that a return to his home country could expose him to violence or persecution from a local gang, Barrio 18. Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime, and the only alleged tie between the construction worker and MS-13 stemmed from a 2019 report of a since-fired Maryland police officer. The report also did not definitively link Abrego-Garcia to the gang.

Donald Trump himself appears confused about Abrego Garcia’s connection to Latin American gangs. The president entered into a terse exchange with ABC News last week when he insisted that a doctored photo of supposed gang tattoos on Abrego Garcia’s knuckles was real. Experts say the photo was obviously photoshopped.

Trump administration officials acknowledged in court filings last month that Abrego Garcia’s forced exit from the country was an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court has ordered the executive branch to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S., but the White House has since contested that ruling, arguing that Abrego Garcia “will never live” in America again.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has derided the idea that he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. as “preposterous,” protesting that he does not have the authority to remove “terrorists” from prisons.

Despite that, Trump has claimed that he does actually have the power to bring Abrego Garcia home—but that he won’t do so.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was brutally called out Tuesday after she claimed the United States was not deporting its own citizens.

During a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois asked Noem if she believed that the U.S. government had the authority to deport American citizens.

“No, and we are not deporting U.S. citizens,” Noem said.

“OK great, I’m so happy to hear that you do not believe that the law gives you that authority, because the federal government has no authority under U.S. laws to deport any American citizen,” Underwood said. “And as I know everyone viewing this hearing today knows that several American citizens have been deported to date.”

“No, they haven’t. That is not true,” Noem replied.

“Secretary Noem, that was not a question,” Underwood said.

Last month, the Trump administration deported three American children to Honduras, alongside their immigrant mothers. Attorneys for the mothers have said that they wanted their children to remain in the U.S., but authorities have said the opposite. Border czar Tom Homan insisted that the children hadn’t technically been deported, and that the mothers had made a “parental decision” to remain with their children.

“If we didn’t do it the story today would be, ‘Trump administration separating families again,’” Homan said. “No, we’re keeping families together.”

While the official number of deportees who are actually American citizens is unknown, The Washington Post documented at least 12 instances in which U.S. citizens had been swept up in Trump’s immigration crackdown. A DHS spokesperson told the outlet, “We don’t have data to provide you on the deportation of U.S. citizens because we don’t deport U.S. citizens.”

Crucially, as the Trump administration continues to conduct deportations while denying due process to detainees, it’s likely the number of U.S. citizens wrongly removed will only continue to rise.

Underwood also asked Noem if she believed that the Constitution guaranteed due process to everyone in America. Noem repeatedly refused to give a “yes” or “no” answer.

“Ma’m, I am trying to ascertain your understanding of the law as it applies to your department, and you as its leader should be able to give us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, because judge after judge has ruled that the law is not being followed,” Underwood said.

The Trump administration has continued to fight judges, flouting a Supreme Court ruling requiring the government to allow detainees “to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” As a result of Donald Trump’s mounting threats against the judiciary, at least

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