After a 16-year legal battle, the Obama administration has received court approval to deport a former defense minister of El Salvador accused of participating in human rights abuses by his troops when he was a top military commander in the 1980s.
The official, Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, says he is ready to leave the United States and would pay his own fare on a commercial flight. But in a new twist, immigration authorities who have been pressing to speed his deportation now say that General Vides cannot deport himself and that his removal will be delayed at least a week.
In a precedent-setting decision on March 11, the Board of Immigration Appeals, the nation’s highest immigration court, ruled that General Vides should be deported because he had “command responsibility” for torture and killings committed by Salvadoran troops during the civil war there. The board found that General Vides, an ally of Washington at the time, had aided in a cover-up of the murder of four American churchwomen in 1980, among other crimes.
General Vides, who has been a legal resident of the United States since 1989, was detained by immigration agents last Wednesday near his home in Palm Coast, Fla. He is being held in an immigration detention center in Jena, La.
On Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit denied a request for a stay of his deportation.
“If the government is serious about shipping him out, then ship him out,” Diego Handel, General Vides’s lawyer, said Tuesday. Mr. Handel said the 77-year-old general is struggling with ailments associated with age, and added that he did not have a criminal record in the United States or El Salvador; the deportation and other cases against General Vides in this country have been civil proceedings.
“To hold him at this point shows a political motivation,” Mr. Handel said. “It is an exercise of raw power.”
A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jennifer Elzea, said the agency was ready to carry out the deportation order and would not release the general. She said the agency did not discuss the timing of deportations.
Officials said General Vides missed his chance to agree to depart voluntarily while the deportation was before the courts. And in a new complication, the Salvadoran authorities said they did not want General Vides sent back this week, during the country’s Holy Week celebrations.
After finally agreeing to leave the United States, the general will have to stay a little longer.
An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect date for a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals. It was March 11, not March 12.