When Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia returned home late Friday, he was greeted with flowers, metallic streamers and cheers. In videos circulated by immigrant rights groups, he shared long, tearful embraces with his wife, children and other family members. He expressed his gratitude to the people who had not abandoned him.
“Thank you for everything,” Mr. Abrego Garcia told his older brother, Cesar, as he wept in his arms.
But the celebration of his homecoming has been muted. For Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March and returned to the United States in June, the odyssey is not over: The federal government has threatened to deport him to Uganda, his lawyers said. So for now, he and his family appeared to be keeping a low profile, with Mr. Abrego Garcia required to use an ankle monitor and largely staying out of the limelight.
Mr. Abrego Garcia, who was in the United States without permission, became a defining face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration when he was deported, prompting outrage from immigrant rights advocates and heightening fear and anxiety among other immigrants in the country.
A sheet metal worker, Mr. Abrego Garcia had been living for years in Prince George’s County in Maryland when he was sent to El Salvador, alongside more than 260 detainees, with no due process. He was sent back in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, where he was held in jail until Friday. His lawyers said the Trump administration’s threat to deport him to Uganda was an attempt to “coerce” him into a guilty plea in the smuggling case.
It was not immediately clear exactly why Trump administration chose Uganda as the place to potentially send Mr. Abrego Garcia to. Initially, federal prosecutors had said that if Mr. Abrego Garcia pleaded guilty to his charges and agreed to stay in custody until Monday, they would send him to Costa Rica, where they said he could live safely, after whatever sentence he is given in that case. But after his lawyers did not agree to keeping him in jail beyond Friday, the administration said if he does accept their plea deal by Monday, they would start the process to deport him to Uganda.
In a statement on his release, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, called him a “monster” — rhetoric the Trump administration has been pushing as it continues to accuse him of being a member of the MS-13 gang. “We will not stop fighting till this Salvadoran man faces justice and is out of our country,” she said.
On Saturday afternoon, his relatives declined multiple interview requests from reporters who arrived at their door in Prince George’s County. Inside, some of them were huddled with members of his legal team, as Mr. Abrego Garcia is expected at an early check-in with immigration authorities on Monday.
Speaking from their front yard later, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the lawyers, said federal officials were targeting his client because he had spoken out against his unlawful deportation and had said he had been tortured at the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in El Salvador.
“The government has decided to use the immigration system to punish him,” Mr. Sandoval-Moshenberg said, adding, “He and his family have suffered enough.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation and dramatic legal fight with the Trump administration has been closely followed in Prince George’s County, which has a big Latino immigrant population.
Since his release, local elected officials, union leaders and immigrant rights activists have continued to rally behind his case, saying Mr. Abrego Garcia’s plight has been but one example of the Trump administration’s constitutional overreach.
“This is a matter that’s greater than just this one case or one man,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat. “If one person’s rights are denied, then the rights of all of us are at risk.” Mr. Van Hollen helped provide the first public glimpses of Mr. Abrego Garcia since his detainment when he met with him in San Salvador in April.
The case has resonated with Latino residents in the area. Some said on Saturday that their anxiety has grown in recent weeks as National Guard troops and agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies combed the streets of Washington, where many of them work.
Near Mr. Abrego Garcia’s home, Ana Ventura, 64, an El Salvador native and naturalized U.S. citizen who has lived in the area for 30 years, said she was shocked when he was picked up in March because he had appeared to work hard and keep to himself. She said that even if the criminal charges against him were serious, he should have been given a chance to defend himself before he was sent away.
Her eyes widened when she learned he might now be deported to Uganda. “That does not seem just to me,” she said.
Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.
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