Washington — A lawyer for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the mistakenly deported man who was recently brought back from El Salvador to face charges in the U.S., said his case is bigger than one individual.
Chris Newman, who represents Abrego Garcia’s family, told CBS News’ Major Garrett in an interview that he does not see the case as a referendum on immigration, but as a potential turning point in the erosion of due process rights in the U.S.
“The Trump administration is very invested in making this a referendum on the immigration debate, which, as you know, has become coarsened and polarized,” Newman said. “And that is one way to look at it. And I think certainly a lot of people view it that way. I don’t view it that way. I view this as a core constitutional order case, a core due process case. And it just so happens that a Salvadoran immigrant is defending bedrock constitutional protections for all of us.”
Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. on Friday to face charges of human smuggling, amid an escalating battle between the Trump administration and the courts.
The case ignited widespread outrage after Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador and held in an infamous supermax prison along with hundreds of other deportees, despite a judge ruling years earlier that he shouldn’t be deported to El Salvador. The Trump administration admitted that his deportation was an “administrative error.”
A judge had ordered the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S., but the administration did not bring him back for months, arguing it was up to the Salvadoran government whether to release him.
The indictment, which was unsealed Friday, alleges that Abrego Garcia and others transported thousands of migrants across the U.S. who were in the country illegally. It also claims that many of the undocumented migrants were members of the gang MS-13. The administration has also accused Abrego Garcia of MS-13 membership, which his family and attorneys strongly deny.
“Until Friday, Kilmar Abrego Garcia had never been charged with any crime, either in the United States or El Salvador, but you wouldn’t know that if you watched White House press briefings for the last two months,” Newman said. “All we’ve been asking up until this point is for Kilmar to have his day in court so he could defend himself.”
In court papers over the weekend, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers accused the Trump administration of an “elaborate, all-of-government effort to defy court orders, deny due process, and disparage Abrego Garcia.” The administration says it has complied with court orders by returning Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
Newman said that Democratic lawmakers who visited Abrego Garcia when he was imprisoned in El Salvador came back with a warning from Salvadorians whose family members had been treated similarly by President Nayib Bukele’s government.
“We in El Salvador have no more guardrails. We have no more Supreme Court. We have no more check against President Bukele, other than public opinion. You all have to fight to make sure that you keep the bedrock institutions of your democracy because we’ve already lost them in El Salvador,” Newman said of their message.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
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