Within minutes after he was released from a Tennessee jail Friday as he awaits criminal trial, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Kilmar Abrego Garcia that he may be deported to Uganda, his attorneys said.
If he pleaded guilty to criminal smuggling charges against him, Donald Trump’s administration said he would be removed to Costa Rica, according to his attorneys.
If not, he would be sent to Uganda, court filings show.
The wrongfully-deported Salvadoran immigrant has been ordered to report to ICE’s Baltimore field office Monday morning, according to court documents. A federal judge in Maryland, who is overseeing his deportation case, has required the government to give him 72 hours' notice before initiating deportation proceedings.
His lawyers accused the Department of Justice and Homeland Security of “working in lockstep” to “coerce” him into “accepting a guilty plea in his criminal case, holding over his head the prospect of possible indefinite detention — or worse — in a country halfway across the world,” according to court filings.
The Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia in March, accusing the Salvadoran national of being a MS-13 gang member — a label he and his attorneys have rejected — and sent him to a brutal Salvadoran megaprison, where he was jailed for nearly one month.
After ignoring several court orders for his return, the administration sent him to Tennessee, where a grand jury indicted him on federal smuggling charges. Last month, a federal judge ordered his pretrial release, finding the government failed to provide “any evidence” that warrants his detention.
On Thursday, the government said if he stayed in custody and pleaded guilty to both counts in the criminal indictment, then he would be removed to Costa Rica, after serving any time imposed by the court, his lawyers wrote in a Saturday filing.
Costa Rica assured he could “live freely” as a refugee or with residency status and wouldn’t be sent back to his home country, the lawyers said.
But Abrego Garcia appears to have refused the arrangement and was released Friday.
DHS then sent an email to Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, warning that ICE intended to deport the Salvadoran immigrant to Uganda “no earlier than 72 hours from now” and ordered he appear at an ICE filed office in Baltimore on Monday.
After his release, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem branded Abrego Garcia a “monster” and accused the judge who allowed the Maryland father to return home “disregarding” Americans’ safety.
“Activist liberal judges have attempted to obstruct our law enforcement every step of the way in removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from our country,” she said in a statement.
“By ordering this monster loose on America’s streets, this judge has shown a complete disregard for the safety of the American people,” she continued. “We will not stop fighting till this Salvadoran man faces justice and is OUT of our country.”
Noem regularly uses inflammatory language about migrants as she implements the president’s anti-immigration agenda. DHS is facing a barrage of lawsuits over its aggressive deportation efforts.
“The government’s decision to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda makes it painfully clear that they are using the immigration system to punish him for exercising his constitutional rights,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, a lawyer for the Salvadoran national, told The Independent.
“There is a perfectly reasonable option available, Costa Rica, where he his family can visit him easily, but instead they are attempting to send him halfway across the world, to a country with documented human rights abuses and where he does not even speak the language. This is not justice; it is retaliation.”
Uganda and the U.S. reached a temporary deal in which the African country agreed to accept people “who may not be granted asylum in the United States but are reluctant to or may have concerns about returning to their countries of origin,” Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday. However, that deal excludes individuals with criminal records.
The Independent has contacted DHS for more information.
Earlier this week, a senior DHS official told The Independent that Abrego Garcia “won’t be on American streets again.”
He entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager in 2011 after fleeing gang violence in his home country, and has since been living in Maryland with his wife, a U.S. citizen, and their three children. An immigration judge in 2019 allowed him to legally live and work in the U.S. on humanitarian grounds, preventing the government from sending him back to El Salvador.
Despite this order, in March, he was removed to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT prison. The government admitted in a court filing that his removal was due to an “administrative error.”
In April, the Supreme Court ordered the government to “facilitate” his return to the U.S. Still, the Trump administration fought court orders and insisted he would never set foot in the U.S., branding him as a criminal gang member. Abrego Garcia has vehemently denied the claim and has never been charged with or convicted of being a member of any gang.
