(AFP) – A Salvadoran man at the center of a row over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown was arrested on Monday and is facing deportation, officials said. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March and then sent back to the United States, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. ICE was “processing him for deportation,” Noem added in a post on X.
According to Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, the government intends to deport him to far-flung Uganda. Abrego Garcia was released last week from a jail in Tennessee, where he is facing human smuggling charges, and allowed to go home to Maryland pending trial. He was required to check in with ICE in Baltimore on Monday as one of the conditions of his release.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, said his client was taken into custody by ICE when he turned up for the appointment. “The notice stated that the reason was an interview,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “Clearly that was false. There was no need for them to take him into ICE detention.” He was already on electronic monitoring from the US Marshal Service and basically on house arrest. “The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him.”
The attempt to deport Garcia to Uganda in East Africa adds a dramatic new twist to a saga that became a test case for Trump’s harsh crackdown on illegal immigration — and, critics say, his trampling of the law.
– ‘Administrative error’ –
Abrego Garcia had been living in the United States under protected legal status since 2019, when a judge ruled he should not be deported because he could be harmed in his home country. Then he became one of more than 200 people sent to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison as part of Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.
But Justice Department lawyers admitted that the Salvadoran had been wrongly deported due to an “administrative error.” He was returned to US soil only to be detained again in Tennessee on human smuggling charges. Abrego Garcia denies any wrongdoing, while the administration alleges he is a violent MS-13 gang member who smuggled other undocumented migrants into the country.
On Thursday, when it became clear Abrego Garcia would be released the following day, government officials made him a plea offer: remain in custody, plead guilty to human smuggling and be deported to Costa Rica. He declined the offer. The case has become emblematic of Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration. Right-wing supporters praise the Republican president’s toughness, but legal scholars and human rights advocates have blasted what they say is a haphazard rush to deport people without even a court hearing, in violation of basic US law.
© 2024 AFP
