President Donald Trump has shown no sign of slowing his administration’s deportation tactics, which include sending alleged international gang members who are in the country illegally to high-security prisons in other countries. During his meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele on Monday, Trump doubled down on his administration’s methods of threatening criminals who are in the country illegally and expanded it to “homegrown criminals,” saying he would like to see America’s worst be sent overseas too.
Trump clarified that the law would be followed, “but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking that are absolute monsters. I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country.”
To further his tough stance on crime in the country, he told reporters with Bukele standing beside him that he would export as many people as necessary, admitting that he asked the Central American president if he would build more mega prisons like the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where three planeloads of Venezuelan and Salvadoran deportees accused of being members of Latin American gangs were sent in March.
Will any prisoners be returned?
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who unlawfully entered the U.S. from El Salvador in 2011, was among the alleged MS-13 gang members sent to CECOT. His deportation has sparked significant legal controversy, culminating in a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court last week.
The Trump administration has remained firm in its decision to deport him. Attorney General Pam Bondi said during a meeting Monday that Abrego Garcia was in the U.S. illegally and that an immigration court and appellate immigration court in 2019 each ruled him a gang member.
She said the matter is now a foreign affair, and is up to El Salvador, not the United States, to decide whether to return Abrego Garcia. “If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane,” Bondi said, though Bukele stood firm he wouldn’t return the married father of three back to America.
“Do I smuggle him into the United States? Of course, I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said. “It’s like, I mean the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”
Bukele continued: “We’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, and you want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That’s not going to happen.”
Many, including Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, are holding out hope for his return, as she has been firmly outspoken about his innocence.
However, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller told Fox News that even if he were to return, he would be detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported to another country.
Here is what we know so far about Abrego Garcia’s timeline and what ultimately led him to be detained in the maximum security prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador:
Abrego Garcia fled gang violence
According to testimonial evidence presented in court filings in 2019, the year ICE officials first detained him, Abrego Garcia was born in 1995 in the Los Nogales neighborhood of San Salvador, El Salvador. According to the documents, his mother ran a successful business from home, creating a local tortilla dish the family helped with. His family’s income was found out by the El Salvadoran gang Barrio 18, which then began extorting the family for money, threatening death if not granted.
The family apparently moved multiple times to avoid danger, but each was a failed attempt, and the gang began demanding the recruitment of Abrego Garcia’s older brother, Cesar. Soon after, Cesar was sent to the U.S. where he is now a legal citizen, making Abrego Garcia their next target. When he was around 16, he fled to the U.S. illegally.
ICE detained Abrego Garcia first in 2019
He was first detained on March 28, 2019, when ICE initiated removal proceedings against him. Almost a month later, he faced a hearing before Immigration Judge Elizabeth A. Kessler after local police classified him as a gang member.
“The allegation appears to stem from two documents that were introduced before Kessler: a federal I-213 form (Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien), filled out by ICE, and a form generated by the Prince George’s Police Department, called a Gang Field Interview Sheet. The latter had been entered into the Prince George’s Police Department database at 6:47 p.m. on March 28, 2019 — about four hours after police met Abrego Garcia for the first time,” per Lawfare.
In her bond memorandum, Kessler found that ICE had gathered enough evidence to deem Abrego Garcia a gang member and, if released, could pose a danger to society.
“Although the Court is reluctant to give evidentiary weight to the Respondent’s clothing as an indication of gang affiliation, the fact that a ‘past, proven, and reliable source of information’ verified the Respondent’s gang membership, rank, and gang name is sufficient to support that the Respondent is a gang member, and the Respondent has failed to present evidence to rebut that assertion,” the filing said, denying his request for release on bail.
In his wife’s affidavit, she wrote that she was “shocked” when she attended the hearing and heard the accusations against Abrego Garcia:
“Kilmar is not and has never been a gang member. I’m certain of that. Because of these false accusations, he was denied bond. This left me alone to care and provide for our family, while I was very far along in my pregnancy, under extreme stress. I was terrified that he could be deported to El Salvador and our son would not have a father.”
In October 2019, Immigration Judge David M. Jones denied Abrego Garcia’s request for asylum and for withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture but did grant him withholding of removal, meaning he was legally protected from being deported back to his home country, protecting him from potential gang violence.
ICE detains Abrego Garcia again last March
On March 12, Abrego Garcia was pulled over by ICE officers while driving with his child in the car. According to the complaint filed by Abrego Garcia’s legal team, he was told his “status has changed” and was detained on the scene, even though — they argue — he has no criminal record and has followed his yearly check-in with ICE, which is required once a year.
Vasquez Sura last spoke to her husband on March 15, before he boarded the plane to El Salvador, she told CNN.
On March 31, ICE admitted an “administrative error” was made in his deportation, but that “the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13,” per court filings.
Following his deportation, U.S. Federal District Judge Paula Xinis said in her filing on April 4 that Abrego Garcia’s removal violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, granted him no legal process, and caused “irreparable harm,” putting him in prison filled with gang violence where he could be a target,
U.S. Supreme Court intervenes
On April 7, Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. temporarily barred Xinis’ order that Abrego Garcia be returned to the U.S. by midnight of that day. Less than a week later, the Supreme Court made a unanimous decision regarding his status.
Upholding the lower court decision that Abrego Garcia was wrongfully deported, the justices mandated the Trump administration to make efforts to return him:
Part “of the District Court’s order remains in effect but requires clarification on remand. The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
U.S. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a separate statement following the unanimous ruling that she agreed with the court’s order “that the proper remedy is to provide Abrego Garcia with all the process to which he would have been entitled had he not been unlawfully removed to El Salvador. That means the Government must comply with its obligation to provide Abrego Garcia with ‘due process of law,’ including notice and an opportunity to be heard, in any future proceedings.”
She added it would be wrong to “leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law.”