Washington — Kilmar Abrego Garcia was taken into custody Monday by immigration authorities following his release from criminal custody last week and Homeland Security said ICE is processing him for deportation.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, filed a lawsuit Monday morning to challenge his deportation to Uganda. In a legal filing over the weekend, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said he was offered a plea deal that included deportation to Costa Rica. His attorneys said they then received a notice of his possible deportation to Uganda. Sandoval-Moshenberg clarified Monday that Abrego Garcia had stated that he was willing to accept refugee status in Costa Rica.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said Abrego Garcia had filed a new lawsuit challenging his confinement and deportation to any country “unless and until he had a fair trial in an immigration court, as well as his full appeal rights.”
Sandoval-Moshenberg said the ICE officer did not answer when asked about the reason for Abrego Garcia’s detention and would not say which detention center he would be taken to or commit to providing paperwork.
“There was no need for them to take him into ICE detention. He was already on electronic monitoring from the U.S. Marshall Service and basically on house arrest,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him. To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”
Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March and held in a notorious Salvadoran prison for months before being returned to the U.S. in June where he was jailed. A judge ruled that he should be released from detention ahead of a trial set for January on federal human smuggling charges.
Abrego Garcia was released from pre-trial detention on Friday.
He arrived at the ICE facility on Monday morning to check in, speaking in Spanish to supporters who had gathered in a show of support outside of the facility.
CBS News reported Saturday that hours after he was released, his attorneys were sent a court-required notice of his potential deportation to Uganda.
“The fact that they’re holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty to a crime is such clear evidence that they’re weaponizing the immigration system in a manner that is completely unconstitutional,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said Monday.
Abrego Garcia, who entered the country illegally, was directed to appear at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore on Monday morning. The Department of Homeland Security claims Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his family denies.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Monday in a social media post that ICE had arrested Abrego Garcia and was “processing him for deportation.”
“President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator to terrorize American citizens any longer,” Noem said.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who traveled to El Salvador to advocate for the return of Abrego Garcia earlier this year, met with him Sunday. Van Hollen said in a statement Sunday that he was glad to “welcome him back to Maryland after what has been a long and torturous nightmare.”
“The federal courts and public outcry forced the Administration to bring Ábrego García back to Maryland, but Trump’s cronies continue to lie about the facts in his case and they are engaged in a malicious abuse of power as they threaten to deport him to Uganda — to block his chance to defend himself against the new charges they brought,” Van Hollen said. “As I told Kilmar and his wife Jennifer, we will stay in this fight for justice and due process because if his rights are denied, the rights of everyone else are put at risk.”
An immigration judge ruled in 2019 that Abrego Garcia may not be deported to El Salvador because he feared persecution by local gangs in the Central American country. But the government could legally seek Abrego Garcia’s deportation to another country, such as Uganda.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore advocated for due process for Abrego Garcia on Sunday, saying on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that “I just simply want a court and a judge to decide what is going to be the future fate of this case and all cases like this, and not simply the President of the United States or the secretary of homeland security who is trying to be judge, juror, prosecutor and executioner inside this case.”
contributed to this report.
