By KIT SLACK
Update April 11: The Supreme Court has largely upheld the district court’s order. You can read their opinion here.
Update April 7: The chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court put the district court’s order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia on hold, so that the full court could consider the government’s appeal and Abrego-Garcia’s family’s response.
On March 12, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took Kilmar Abrego Garcia, age 29, of Beltsville, into custody. They stopped him in Baltimore as he was driving home from picking up his 5-year-old son at the child’s grandmother’s house.
On March 16, just four days later, Abrego Garcia’s wife saw him in a photo of men in a maximum security prison in El Salvador called CECOT, one of the largest prisons in the world housing up to 40,000 inmates. Though the men were crouched, with shaved heads bowed and hands behind their necks, she recognized the tattoos on her husband’s arm and the scars on his head.
Abrego Garcia is being held in El Salvador without the ability to communicate with the outside world. His lawyer said that Abrego Garcia has never been charged with any crime in the U.S. or El Salvador and that no one has been able to make contact with him.
On Friday, April 4, in Greenbelt, Federal District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered the federal government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, April 7. The Trump administration immediately appealed.
In an unusual hearing, Erez Reuveni, who is a career attorney with the Department of Justice, said his clients in the federal government did not contest any of the facts presented by Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s lawyer. Reuveni conceded that he had no evidence of any lawful basis for Abrego Garcia being taken into custody March 12. He also said he had no evidence to support the Trump administration’s claim that the United States has no contract with El Salvador to hold prisoners.
“Why can’t the United States get Mr. Abrego Garcia back?” Judge Xinis asked.
“When this case landed on my desk, the first thing I did was ask my clients that very question.” Reuveni answered. “I’ve not received, to date, an answer that I find satisfactory.” Reuveni and his supervisor were put on indefinite leave without pay the day after the hearing, according to Bloomberg News.
According to Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit watchdog, no prisoner has ever been known to be released from CECOT, which first opened in January of 2023.
The government has argued in court filings that under the U.S. Constitution, a court cannot dictate how the president conducts foreign relations: in this case, by ordering the administration to ask El Salvador for the release of Abrego Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia’s family argues that courts routinely order the government to return or facilitate the return of residents who were wrongfully removed to other countries. They also say that the prisoners sent to CECOT are being detained by the U.S. government, though housed in El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia crossed the border into the United States in 2011 at the age of 16.
He first came in contact with law enforcement outside a Hyattsville Home Depot in March 2019, where he was looking for work as a day laborer.
That encounter with a detective from the Hyattsville Police Department (HPD) led to Abrego Garcia’s arrest by the Prince George’s Police Department (PGPD) and transfer to ICE custody, all in one afternoon. This transfer happened despite Hyattsville’s sanctuary city ordinance forbidding HPD officers from enforcing federal immigration law and a PGPD policy of not working with ICE unless a criminal warrant had been issued.
ICE held Abrego Garcia in custody from March until October of 2019, while his immigration case was litigated. He was reportedly held without bail because an informant said he was a gang member. While an order of removal was issued against him because he entered the country illegally, a judge granted withholding of that removal, ordering that Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador because he would be persecuted and potentially tortured by a gang there.
Abrego Garcia is now permitted to work in the U.S. He is a full-time apprentice sheet metal worker, seeking licensure through a program at the University of Maryland. He lives with his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, and three children.
Abrego Garcia’s case has attracted national attention. While administration officials have admitted ICE made a mistake, they have said Abrego Garcia will not be brought back, claiming, without offering evidence, that Abrego Garcia is a gang member.
State Del. Nicole Williams, who represents District 22, which includes Hyattsville, has said that immigrants in her district are afraid to take their kids to school and have stopped attending library programming because of current federal immigration enforcement policies. She was the lead sponsor of legislation that would have prevented local law enforcement from making agreements with ICE. While that legislation passed on the last day of Maryland’s legislative session, April 7, it was stripped, at the last minute, of the provision preventing local law enforcement agreements with ICE.
Total numbers of immigrant removals from the interior of the country have not been higher under President Trump than under President Biden, according to the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse, a data analytics nonprofit. In a February press release and a March 28 social media post, ICE has complained that Prince George’s County does not cooperate with them.
The HPD confirmed that an incident involving Abrego Garcia and Hyattsville police occurred on March 28, 2019, at about 2:30 p.m. The Life & Times has requested the incident report and interviews related to the incident, which the department did not immediately provide.
This story was updated April 5, April 6, and April 10..
