Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett struggled to pick her jaw up off the floor after the White House openly mocked a Maryland dad the administration has wrongfully deported.
“Who are we, where are we living, and who is running this country?” Crockett said during a Saturday appearance on MSNBC’s The Katie Phang Show.
On Friday, the official White House X account posted a Photoshopped image of a New York Times story and edited the headline to say that Kilmar Abrego Garcia—who the Trump administration itself admitted was deported because of an “administrative error”—was “an MS-13 illegal alien” who is “never coming back.”
“One of my colleagues actually put this post up in a group chat, and I was, like, ‘OK, this isn’t real, right?’” Crockett said. “Because [of] the level of childishness we saw in this post but also just the level of cruelty and the level of admission that we’ve seen.”
Last month, the Trump administration mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia, who is currently being held in an El Salvadoran megaprison. The Supreme Court has ordered the government to “facilitate” his return, but Trump officials continue to falsely claim that the El Salvadoran national is a member of the notorious MS-13 street gang.
“This [post] will most likely show up in a contempt hearing,” Crockett claimed on Saturday, further wondering who on the White House press team might have thought sharing the meme was a good idea or, at this stage, even “if they really do care.”
