Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released from federal custody in Tennessee and is returning to his home in Maryland, more than four months after he was wrongfully deported to a brutal Salvadoran prison only to be returned to the United States to be imprisoned on federal smuggling charges.
A private security company will transport the 29-year-old back home, his lawyers have said in court filings.
The Salvadoran immigrant’s high-profile immigration case has been at the center of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, and the administration has vowed to again initiate deportation proceedings against him upon his release.
Last month, the federal judge overseeing a criminal case against him ordered his release from jail before trial, finding that prosecutors failed to show “any evidence” that his history or arguments against him warrant his ongoing detention.
Another federal judge overseeing his wrongful deportation case blocked the Trump administration from immediately arresting and deporting him after his release.
Abrego Garcia entered the country illegally as a teenager after fleeing gang violence in El Salvador. He had been living with his wife and child, both U.S. citizens, in Maryland, when he was arrested by immigration authorities during a traffic stop in March.
Despite an immigration judge’s earlier order that blocked his removal from the country for humanitarian reasons, he was put on a plane for El Salvador on March 15.
Government lawyers admitted in court documents that he was removed from the country due to a procedural error, and several federal judges and a unanimous Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return after his “illegal” arrest.
Still, the government spent weeks battling court orders while officials publicly said he would never step foot in the United States, characterizing him as a serial abuser and criminal gang member.
Emails and text messages provided to members of Congress appear to show that administration officials and government lawyers were sympathetic to his wrongful removal and made efforts to get him out of El Salvador before the case made headlines, which caused major headaches for the White House.
In court filings, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys detailed the “severe mistreatment” and “torture” he experienced during his month-long detention inside El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
His attorneys say the 29-year-old father was subject to “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture” at the facility.
He was abruptly flown back to the United States in June to face criminal charges in Tennessee, where a grand jury indicted him on federal smuggling charges.
A two-count indictment accuses Abrego Garcia of participating in a years-long conspiracy to illegally move undocumented immigrants from Texas to other parts of the country. He faces one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and one count of unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens. He has pleaded not guilty.
In their request to keep him in jail before trial, federal prosecutors also claimed he is a member of transnational gang MS-13 and “personally participated in violent crime, including murder.”
Prosecutors also claim he “abused” women and trafficked children, firearms and narcotics, and there is also an ongoing investigation into “solicitation of child pornography.”
Abrego Garcia is not facing any charges on any of those allegations, and a federal judge determined that the government failed to link those allegations to evidence that implicates him.
On Tuesday, his attorneys asked a federal judge to throw out the criminal case against him, citing “vindictive” or “selective prosecution.”
They claim he was “singled out” by the Trump administration for “having the audacity to fight back, rather than accept a brutal injustice” after he was wrongfully deported to a brutal prison in his home country.
“Even as government officials recognized both publicly and privately that Mr. Abrego’s removal to El Salvador had been a serious mistake, the government responded not with contrition, or with any effort to fix its mistake, but with defiance,” his attorneys wrote.
“A group of the most senior officials in the United States sought vengeance: they began a public campaign to punish Mr. Abrego for daring to fight back, culminating in the criminal investigation that led to the charges in this case,” they added.
His lawyers admitted that motions to dismiss on grounds of selective or vindictive prosecution are rarely granted, but “if there has ever been a case for dismissal on those grounds, this is that case,” they said.
“The government is attempting to use this case — and this Court — to punish Mr. Abrego for successfully fighting his unlawful removal. That is a constitutional violation of the most basic sort. The Indictment must be dismissed,” his attorneys wrote.
