Why Team Trump Wants to Deport Abrego Garcia

WASHINGTON—Some 13 years ago, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, then 16, crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The Salvadoran citizen did not have a run-in with the law until 2019, when he was first taken into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Later, he was released. After President Donald Trump retook the Oval Office, Abrego Garcia was ordered deported.

You probably first learned of Abrego Garcia as the “Maryland man” who was “wrongly deported,” as per The New York Times. The “wrongly deported” reference concerned his deportation to El Salvador, the one country he couldn’t be sent to, a judge had stipulated. Not the deportation itself.

So it was an admitted “administrative error”—which my profession has been happy to misrepresent. In accordance with a judge’s reasoning, the Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia to the United States in June.

He is now in a detention facility in Virginia.

Here are a few things you may not know about Abrego Garcia. It’s a complex story of a man with a checkered past.

—After 13 years in the United States, Abrego Garcia has not learned English. When he spoke to supporters by a Maryland courthouse this week, he had an interpreter.

—When federal agents arrested Abrego Garcia on Tuesday, he blamed a “corrupt government”—in Spanish.

—He has a legal work permit and worked as a sheet-metal apprentice when he was arrested with his 5-year-old in the car this year.

—In 2019 and 2020, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, filed two petitions for protection against her husband relating to domestic violence.

—In one petition, the wife accused her husband of slapping, shoving and detaining her against her will.

—In 2020, she wrote that he had told her ex-mother-in-law that even if he killed her, “no one can do anything to him.”

—No charges were filed.

—He failed to appear for traffic violation proceedings.

—Two immigration judges who reviewed Abrego Garcia’s case believed he was a member of MS-13.

—He has never been convicted of a crime, and he denies membership in MS-13.

—Since his return from El Salvador, the Trump administration has said it wants to deport Abrego Garcia to Uganda, where, his lawyer complained, he does not speak the language. Uganda’s official language is, ironically, English.

—In 2022, the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped Abrego Garcia for speeding only to find he was driving without a license. Abrego Garcia had $1,400 on him. There were eight other passengers in the car and no luggage, which led authorities to wonder if he was a human smuggler. Officers issued a warning for his lack of a driver’s license issue and did not charge him.

—In May, Acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire, for the Middle District of Tennessee, charged Abrego Garcia with conspiracy to transport aliens, including MS-13 members and associates, for financial gain.

Abrego Garcia’s many lawyers called the move “vindictive prosecution.”

To many Americans, the correct adjective would be: overdue.

Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge with the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies, made it clear that charges against an individual are not proof of guilt.

So I repeat, Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of any crime.

I also repeat, he has been ordered deported, and not just because he is here illegally.

Here’s the thing that strikes the canny Arthur as meaningful: When Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador, El Salvador put him in its Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. CECOT is a President Nayib Bukele’s “megaprison.”

“That’s not how this works,” Arthur told me. “No country simply imprisons its own nationals because a deporting country asked them to.” By putting Abrego Garcia in CECOT, it appears the Bukele government saw Abrego Garcia as a serious criminal.

Wednesday, the Salvadoran’s lawyers told a federal judge he wants to seek asylum in the United States.

Me? If I were living in a country illegally and I wanted to become part of the community, I would learn the language. If I wanted to be granted asylum, I would avoid speeding. I would not drive without a license. I would not do anything that my American-born wife would want to report to the police.

Unless I thought I could get away with anything.

And “no one can do anything to” me.

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