Lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in March and then returned in June, accused the Trump administration on Saturday of trying to “coerce” him to plead guilty in his criminal case by threatening to re-deport him “halfway across the world” to Uganda.
In a seven-page filing in Federal District Court in Nashville, the lawyers said that on Thursday evening, one day before Mr. Abrego Garcia was set to be released from criminal custody, federal prosecutors offered him a deal. The prosecutors said that if he agreed to remain in jail until Monday and then pleaded guilty to charges of having taken part in a long-running conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the United States, they would agree to deport him to Costa Rica after he served whatever sentence he was given in the case.
As a further inducement to enter a guilty plea, according to the filing, the prosecutors provided the defense lawyers with a letter confirming that Mr. Abrego Garcia could live freely in Costa Rica, which would “accept him as a refugee or grant him residency status.”
The lawyers said they ultimately rejected the proposal to keep Mr. Abrego Garcia locked up through the weekend but promised to convey the government’s offer of a plea bargain to their client.
But after Mr. Abrego Garcia was freed from custody in Tennessee on Friday afternoon, they said, the Trump administration suddenly changed course. Working together, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security informed the lawyers that if Mr. Abrego Garcia did not accept the offer to plead guilty and be sent to Costa Rica by Monday morning, then Immigration and Customs Enforcement would start the process of expelling him to Uganda.
“There can be only one interpretation of these events,” the lawyers wrote. “The D.O.J., D.H.S., and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Abrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat.”
The lawyers previously had filed a motion last week accusing the Trump administration of vindictively filing an indictment against Mr. Abrego Garcia simply because he and his lawyers dared to fight his deportation.
The filing on Saturday in Nashville was styled as a supplement to that motion, which Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers submitted to Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., who is hearing the criminal case. As part of the motion, the lawyers asked Judge Crenshaw to throw the entire case out.
It remains unclear what might happen next.
If Mr. Abrego Garcia refuses to plead guilty, then prosecutors will likely have to dismiss the human smuggling charges they unsealed against him in June before deporting him again. And if ICE officials follow through on their threat to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia to Uganda, his lawyers are likely to challenge that effort by filing a new lawsuit, probably in Maryland, where he has now rejoined his family.
Either way, the zigzagging path that Trump officials have taken in Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case for more than five months suggests that their main goal all along has been to rid themselves of a legal and political problem that has caused them trouble and embarrassment.
First, administration officials deported Mr. Abrego Garcia, who was in the United States without permission, to El Salvador in direct violation of a court order that barred him from being sent there. Then, after weeks of saying that they were powerless to bring him back, they did precisely that, returning him to U.S. soil to face the human-smuggling indictment.
Attorney General Pam Bondi declared at the time that Mr. Abrego Garcia had “landed in the United States to face justice,” but it soon became clear that the administration was leaning toward deporting him again, especially if Judge Crenshaw agreed to release him from custody as he awaited trial.
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said this latest twist was further proof that the administration is out to punish.
“It is difficult to imagine a path the government could have taken,” the lawyers wrote, “that would have better emphasized its vindictiveness.”
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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