Judge orders wrongly deported Maryland man to be returned to U.S.
STORY: :: Judge orders wrongly deported Maryland man be returned to the U.S. from El Salvador
:: April 4, 2025
:: Greenbelt, Maryland
:: Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Attorney for family of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
"Judge Xinis granted the preliminary injunction and ordered that Kilmar Abrego Garcia be brought back to the United States by 11:59 p.m. on Monday. She found that the government did not dispute that there was no legal basis whatsoever for his deportation. She found that the government's arguments that she was powerless to order him brought back to the United States were without legal merit and she found that he was suffering irreparable harm with every day that goes by while he is separated from his family and while he's detained under such harsh conditions in the infamous CECOT prison." // "He's not being detained based on any Salvadoran legal process, but rather he's being detained because the United States government has requested that he be detained. And so for that reason, she found that the defendants do have the ability to bring him back to the United States. And she ordered it."
:: Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
'I want to say thank you to everyone that has helped us, that has supported us in fighting this, and we will continue fighting for Kilmar, for my husband. Thank you.'
The U.S. has already acknowledged Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported in error as part of three planeloads of migrants flown out last month over alleged ties to violent gangs.
But the administration has argued it has no legal authority to bring him back to the country, though Abrego Garcia's lawyers dispute that.
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3 hours ago
- Yahoo
DOJ Brings Kilmar Abrego Garcia Back to the U.S. After Insisting It Couldn't
Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S. to appear in court on Friday, more than two months after being deported to a prison in El Salvador, the country of his birth. No matter how the trial shakes out, it's just the latest example of the Trump administration playing fast and loose with both the facts and the law. Abrego Garcia was charged with two federal counts of trafficking. The grand jury indictment says Abrego Garcia "was a member and associate of the transnational criminal organization…MS-13" and conspired to transport "undocumented aliens and narcotics" and "firearms" into and across the U.S. These claims seem to stem from a 2022 traffic stop when the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped Abrego Garcia for speeding while driving a vehicle with multiple passengers. At the time, he told police they were coming from St. Louis, where they had been working in construction; he was not detained. The indictment says data from license plate readers showed the vehicle "had not been near St. Louis in the past twelve months and, in fact, had been in the Houston, Texas area." "Unfortunately, Kilmar is currently imprisoned without contact with the outside world, which means he cannot respond to the claims," Abrego Garcia's wife said in April, when details of the traffic stop were made public. Indeed, a court of law is the best place to adjudicate those claims, but there is evidence that the government may have cooked up the charges in order to retroactively justify the case: On May 21, the same day the grand jury returned the indictment, Ben Schrader, head of the Nashville U.S. Attorney's Office's Criminal Division, resigned. Sources told ABC News it was "prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons." The case has been controversial from the start: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Abrego Garcia on March 12; three days later he was deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), an overcrowded Salvadoran maximum security prison whose director says its inmates are "psychopaths who will be difficult to rehabilitate" and therefore "will never leave." But an immigration judge in 2019 had granted Abrego Garcia "withholding of removal, thereby protecting him from return to his native country, El Salvador," as Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court of Maryland wrote in April. When the Trump administration deported him, it did so in violation of this protective order, sending him to the one place it was forbidden to do so. "Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error," the government admitted in a March 31 court filing. Indeed, the administration was apparently blindsided by the news, as Hamed Aleaziz and Alan Feuer reported last month in The New York Times. Citing internal documents, Aleaziz and Feuer detailed how the administration feverishly tried to retroactively justify the deportation, either by nullifying the 2019 order or by portraying Abrego Garcia as a "leader" of MS-13 "even though they could find no evidence to support the claim." "This was an administrative error," one Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official wrote in an email, before adding, "Not that we should say publicly." Publicly, the administration claimed Abrego Garcia's knuckle tattoos indicated MS-13 membership—though President Donald Trump himself seemed to mistake the White House's Photoshopped labels with Abrego Garcia's actual tattoos. Xinis "order[ed] that [the administration] return Abrego Garcia to the United States." The Supreme Court intervened, staying Xinis' order but otherwise affirming its finding to "facilitate…the return of [Abrego Garcia] to the United States by no later than 11:59 PM on Monday, April 7." But the administration refused, illogically claiming it had no right to do so. During an Oval Office meeting in April, both Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele mocked the idea of returning Abrego Garcia to the U.S. "I don't have the power to return him to the United States," Bukele said. In a legal filing that same day, DHS acting general counsel Joseph Mazzarra said the department "does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation." "He is not coming back to our country," Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News. "President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That's the end of the story." So, the news on Friday that Abrego Garcia was coming back—and at the Department of Justice's direction, no less—was a bit stunning. But even though the indictment could very well just be retroactive justification for deporting someone in violation of numerous court orders, it remains the case that a court of law is the ideal place to adjudicate allegations against Abrego Garcia—not unsourced allegations delivered in press conferences and on social media. "Is it possible that [fellow deportee Andry José] Hernández Romero, Abrego Garcia, and others are members of a gang? It is. It is also possible they are not," wrote Billy Binion in the July 2025 issue of Reason. Finding out whether they deserve to be in prison before sending them there is fundamental to due process. The post DOJ Brings Kilmar Abrego Garcia Back to the U.S. After Insisting It Couldn't appeared first on
Yahoo
5 hours ago
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The Criminal Case Against Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is Highly Suspect
On Friday, the Trump administration finally complied with multiple court orders to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States, securing his release from a prison in El Salvador. The catch: Federal officials promptly placed Abrego Garcia in criminal custody, unveiling an indictment alleging that he unlawfully smuggled migrants across the U.S. He will now be detained in Tennessee—far from his home and family in Maryland—awaiting trial on these charges. The indictment is, quite obviously, an effort by the White House to save face after losing its legal battle to keep Abrego Garcia imprisoned overseas. It has been nearly three months since the government deported him, due to its own 'administrative error,' in clear violation of a court order. And it has been almost two months since the Supreme Court ordered the government to 'facilitate' his return from the Salvadoran prison where he has been held. Although Abrego Garcia lacks permanent legal status in the U.S., he was protected against removal to his home country of El Salvador and denied due process during his expulsion, along with hundreds of other migrants to the notorious CECOT prison complex. (After his case garnered international attention, he was moved by Salvadoran authorities to a different prison.) Now, after repeatedly suggesting that it would defy SCOTUS, the Trump administration has finally complied, begrudgingly, by bringing Abrego Garcia back to the United States to face criminal prosecution. The charges against him may be valid. They may be exaggerated. Or they may be fabricated. It is far too soon to tell, and an indictment—which is notoriously easy to obtain—sheds little light on the matter. But already, there are at least five reasons to be skeptical that the government is acting in good faith and telling the truth about Abrego Garcia. First, it is unclear why the Trump administration waited so long to bring this indictment if the facts are as damning and undeniable as it claims. The White House has been desperately searching for ways to smear Abrego Garcia since it first deported him in March. It incessantly alleged that he was a known gang member without proffering any credible evidence; the White House's alleged 'proof' rested on the word of a disgraced former cop who later pleaded guilty to providing confidential information to a sex worker he had hired. The administration also accused Abrego Garcia of human trafficking because, in late 2022, he was pulled over while driving in a car with eight other Hispanic men. That episode now forms the basis of his indictment. But if that's true, why did federal prosecutors wait two and a half years to charge him? Second, and relatedly, the federal government took a very different view of the 2022 incident when it occurred. There was no overt evidence that Abrego Garcia was smuggling immigrants across the country, as prosecutors now claim. At the time, any inference of human trafficking rested entirely on circumstantial evidence and racial profiling. (A known construction worker, Abrego Garcia reported that he and his passengers were on their way to a construction site.) After pulling him over, Tennessee police reported Abrego Garcia and his passengers to federal law enforcement—but federal officers directed local police to let them continue along their way. The federal government did not see fit to even detain or investigate him then. Now it has brought felony charges against him. What changed—other than the president and his suddenly urgent desire to find a justification for his blatantly unlawful rendition program? Third, as Just Security's Ryan Goodman has noted, the government's account of the 2022 traffic stop has shifted as well. In their indictment and motion for pretrial detention, prosecutors claim that Abrego Garcia lied to officers during the encounter, concealing that he was driving his passengers up from Texas. That allegation lies at the heart of the case: It ostensibly confirms that Abrego Garcia was dishonest about his actions and intentions, giving rise to a reasonable suspicion that he was covering up criminal activity. The allegation, though, appears to be false. According to a 2022 Department of Homeland Security referral report, he was driving his passengers from Texas to Maryland for construction work. This report thus contradicts the government's new assertion that Abrego Garcia deceptively omitted the fact that his journey began in the Lone Star State. Fourth, prosecutors have now brought forth a raft of disturbing allegations about Abrego Garcia's behavior, accusing him of regularly smuggling guns, transporting migrants for cash, and attempting to solicit child pornography. But it has provided literally no supporting evidence for its claims about child pornography, or even the scantest details about this eye-popping accusation. Meanwhile, its allegations about human smuggling rest entirely on Abrego Garcia's alleged co-conspirators, who have since been imprisoned or deported. This kind of evidence is notoriously unreliable, in part because the government frequently offers deals—including payments, sentence reductions, or early release—to informants in exchange for inculpatory evidence. This practice incentivizes hyperbolic or made-up claims and disproportionately leads to wrongful conviction. Indeed, the Supreme Court recently took the rare step of overturning a capital conviction that rested on the dubious testimony of the defendant's alleged co-conspirator. The Trump administration's accusations should therefore be regarded with healthy suspicion. Finally, ABC News has reported that Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, has resigned over his office's conduct in this case, fearing that Abrego Garcia was targeted for political reasons. Schrader's unusual move is a flashing red warning sign that something has gone terribly wrong in this case. There could be no clearer indication that the Trump administration is, indeed, persecuting Abrego Garcia as punishment for his efforts to fight his illegal deportation—a perverse attempt to ensure that, although he may have succeeded in returning to the U.S., his remaining time here will be spent behind bars. In 1940, shortly before his elevation to the Supreme Court, Robert Jackson issued a warning about the sweeping discretion of federal prosecutors. 'With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes,' Jackson explained, 'a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.' This approach, Jackson warned, represents the 'greatest danger of abuse,' especially for those who happen to be 'unpopular' with the government. It is abundantly clear that in Abrego Garcia's case, the Trump administration started by 'picking the man,' then looking for the crime. That alone is cause for concern that this indictment represents a grievous abuse of the criminal justice system. The facts that come out at trial may or may not substantiate the charges. But at this point, the case bears so many hallmarks of a political prosecution that no one should assume that the government is speaking a word of truth.
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5 hours ago
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How One LA Restaurant Opened Its Doors to Injured Police During Protests
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A Salvadoran restaurant in Los Angeles opened its doors to police officers injured in escalating protests against the deportation of illegal immigrants over the weekend. Pupuseria La Ceiba workers were seen on ABC 7 footage tending to deputies who appeared to be hit with tear gas in Compton. Newsweek reached out to the restaurant and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for comment via email Monday afternoon. Why It Matters Compton was one of the neighborhoods hit by violent clashes as protestors demonstrating against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeted federal agents carrying out immigration raids as part of President Trump's mass deportation policy. Local law enforcement were called in to try and calm the situation, but they were not part of immigration enforcement efforts, due to sanctuary laws in both L.A. and California. Restaurant workers in Compton, Los Angeles, were seen helping sheriff's deputies over the weekend, following violent clashes between protestors and federal agents. Restaurant workers in Compton, Los Angeles, were seen helping sheriff's deputies over the weekend, following violent clashes between protestors and federal agents. ABC 7 Los Angeles What To Know Federal officers in tactical gear fired tear gas and other non-lethal weapons toward protestors in Compton and Paramount on Saturday, as efforts to quell the riots and violent outbursts ramped up. The footage from Pupuseria La Ceiba showed staff tending to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office deputies, rubbing what appeared to be milk in their eyes following the clashes in the streets nearby. Once the deputies were cleaned up, they went back to their duties. It was not immediately clear where the tear gas came from. The Associated Press reported that Compton's streets were littered with the remnants of tear gas pellets, as well as charred remnants of fires on Sunday morning, with locals clearing up as much as possible. Some in the neighborhood said they were angry at being left to clean up the mess, while others expressed their support for the immigrants living and working in the area. Over 100 people were arrested following the riots, some by federal agents and others by local law enforcement. The Trump administration has insisted that federal agents were targeting national security and public safety threats, as part of ongoing operations to deliver on President Trump's promise of mass deportations. The White House accused Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom of not acting soon enough to ease tensions, leading to the deployment of the National Guard to Compton and other protest areas. What People Are Saying Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, in a post on X Monday: "I just met with LA immigrant rights community leaders as we respond to this chaotic escalation by the Administration. Let me be absolutely clear – as a united city, we are demanding the end to these lawless attacks on our communities. Los Angeles will always stand with EVERYONE who calls our city home." DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement Sunday: "These rioters in Los Angeles are fighting to keep rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals loose on Los Angeles streets. Instead of rioting, they should be thanking ICE officers every single day who wake up and make our communities safer." Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, on X: "California Governor Newsom didn't request the National Guard be deployed to his state following peaceful demonstrations. Trump sent them anyway. It's the first time in 60 years a president has made that choice. Trump's goal isn't to keep Californians safe. His goal is to cause chaos, because chaos is good for Trump." What's Next Communities in LA were continuing to clean up Monday, as more anti-ICE protests were planned in the city and across the country.
