Outrage grows over Maryland man's mistaken deportation to El Salvador prison

In the 22 days since Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador, his young son has sought comfort in the scent of his missing father's clothes.

“He shows me how much he missed Kilmar,” Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said in court documents. “He has been finding Kilmar’s work shirts and smelling them, to smell Kilmar’s familiar scent.”

Abrego Garcia, 29, who worked as a sheet metal apprentice and was pursuing his journeyman license, was pulled over in an Ikea parking lot and arrested on March 12, with his 5-year-old son in the car.

An immigration judge in 2019 had granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador, where Abrego Garcia was likely to face persecution by local gangs. He had a legal work permit issued by the Department of Homeland Security, his lawyer said.

Yet he was sent back to his native El Salvador, which President Donald Trump 's administration acknowledged on Monday was an "administrative error."

Despite this, White House officials have argued against bringing him back, alleging without showing proof that he has ties to the MS-13 gang. The administration further says it lacks the power to seek his return from El Salvador's government, noting that a U.S. court could at best order the White House to “entreat — or even cajole — a close ally.”

Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation has outraged many while raising concerns about the expulsion of noncitizens who were granted permission to be in the United States.

‘Just ask them nicely’

Abrego Garcia's family and attorneys have denied any gang ties and argue that the U.S. has little evidence to support its claim. In court documents filed Wednesday, his lawyers argued that the U.S. government's mistake must be corrected and that he be returned.

Otherwise, immigration court orders are “meaningless, because the government can deport whomever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want,” attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote.

Sandoval-Moshenberg noted the U.S. has been paying El Salvador's government to incarcerate Abrego Garcia and other deportees. He argued that efforts to return him would likely be successful: “First, just ask them nicely to please give him back to us."

"Their argument that there's nothing they could possibly do to get this guy back is significantly weakened by the fact that, on Wednesday of last week, they put Kristi Noem inside that prison," Sandoval-Moshenberg told The Associated Press in an interview, referring to the DHS secretary.

“They didn’t so much as ask and say, ‘By the way, you got this one guy. We messed up. Can we have him back, please?'’' he said, adding that the U.S. previously “moved mountains” to return people mistakenly deported.

Ohio State law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández said it’s “reasonable” to ask the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia, but the courts have little recourse if the White House refuses.

That's because Abrego Garcia is not a U.S. citizen and is outside the country, the professor said. The Supreme Court has long held that Congress, working with the executive branch, gets to decide who's allowed to enter and under what terms.

“I don’t know of a single instance in which a federal court has ordered a presidential administration to allow a particular person who is not a U.S. citizen into the United States,” García Hernández said.

Abrego Garcia's erroneous deportation is “truly worrisome," the professor said, because "who's to say they won't deport somebody else who has legal permission to live in the United States?”

Gangs and the family pupuseria

Abrego Garcia said he fled El Salvador because a gang, Barrio 18, routinely extorted his parents' business for “rent” money and threatened to kill him and his brother if the family didn't comply, according to court documents in his 2019 immigration case.

The family sold pupusas, El Salvador's signature dish, which are flat tortilla pouches that hold steaming blends of cheese, beans or savory pork. Abrego Garcia's mother ran the business, Pupuseria Cecilia, out of their home. His father was a former police officer.

The family eventually sent Abrego Garcia's brother Cesar to the U.S. Abrego Garcia was also sent to the U.S. after the gang repeatedly tried to recruit him, immigration court documents stated.

Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador around 2011, according to his lawyers, and made his way to Maryland to join his older brother, a U.S. citizen.

Abrego Garcia's emigration from El Salvador was the subject of an October 2019 immigration hearing after he was arrested while looking for work and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following allegations about his gang membership.

ICE had argued against his release because local police in Maryland had “verified” his gang membership, court records said. Abrego Garcia subsequently filed for asylum, while his lawyer submitted “voluminous" evidence that he faced the threat of violence in El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia's attorneys also pushed back against the MS-13 claim, which was based on a confidential informant's allegations, court documents said. The informant alleged that Abrego Garcia belonged to an MS-13 chapter in New York, where he had never lived.

An immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request in October 2019 but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador. He was released and ICE did not appeal.

Abrego Garcia later married Vasquez Sura, who is a U.S. citizen, and the couple are parents to their son and her two children from a previous relationship.