The Trump administration says it plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia again—this time to somewhere other than El Salvador.
A prosecutor told a federal court Thursday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to send Abrego Garcia, who became a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown when he was wrongfully sent to an El Salvador prison in March, to another country.
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, remains in the custody of the Department of Justice for now. He faces human smuggling charges that stem from a years-old traffic stop where he was allegedly found to be transporting undocumented migrants.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to all charges, which were filed in April. He has begged authorities to allow him to stand trial before ICE arrested him, but the agency has not budged on its plans to arrest and deport him as soon as he is out of the DOJ’s custody.
He desperately asked to be returned to Maryland earlier Thursday, requesting guarantees that ICE would not immediately arrest him upon release. That came a day after a federal judge said he could be released under his own recognizance ahead of trial. However, his lawyers asked that he remain in federal custody, fearing that, were he to be released Wednesday, ICE would pick him up immediately. Agents were even spotted outside the courthouse where he was appearing.
Those fears were confirmed Thursday. The Associated Press reports that federal prosecutor, Jonathan Guynn said Abrego Garcia’s removal proceedings would be to a “third country,” but he did not say where. Some migrants, including those from Latin America, have been put on removal flights to war-torn South Sudan in East Africa.
One of his attorneys, Jonathan Cooper, told U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who first ordered Abrego Garcia to be returned from El Salvador in March, on a conference call Thursday that his client may be out of the country as soon as this weekend. Xinis responded that she could not block such a request at the speed Cooper asked of her.
“We have concerns that the government may try to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia quickly over the weekend, something like that,” Cooper said, according to the AP.
That conference call came shortly after Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed an emergency motion, pleading with the government to allow him to stand trial in the United States.
“The Government has stated that once Abrego Garcia is released from criminal custody, it will take him into immigration custody and again try to remove him to El Salvador, where it illegally removed him over three months ago,” an emergency motion from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers read on Thursday. “If this Court does not act swiftly, then the Government is likely to whisk Abrego Garcia away to some place far from Maryland.”
Two months ago, the Supreme Court ordered the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States and “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
Abrego Garcia’s March deportation prompted a legal showdown. After flouting court orders, the Trump administration caved in June and brought him back so he could be indicted for allegedly transporting undocumented immigrants.
“He was a smuggler of humans, and women, and children,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said of Abrego Garcia, who otherwise has no other significant run-ins with law enforcement in America, where he has lived since he was 16.
In a statement to ABC News, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said that they are fighting for the rights of their client and all fearful immigrants living in Trump’s America.
“We’re not just fighting for Kilmar, we’re fighting to ensure due process rights are protected for everyone. Because tomorrow, this could be any one of us, if we let power go unchecked, if we ignore our Constitution.”
