Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in March and then brought back to face criminal charges, was detained again on Monday after the administration indicated that it planned to re-deport him to Uganda.
The detention unfolded after Mr. Abrego Garcia arrived at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore and came only three days after he was freed from custody in the criminal case that was filed against him in Federal District Court in Nashville.
The administration has insisted that Mr. Abrego Garcia would “never go free on American soil,” and his lawyers said over the weekend that Trump officials had threatened to deport him to Uganda after he was released from jail in Tennessee.
Outside the ICE office on Monday, a lawyer for Mr. Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said that the stated intention of the meeting was for an interview. “Clearly, that was false,” he said, adding that the immigration authorities did not say why Mr. Abrego Garcia was being detained or even where he would be taken.
The crowd of supporters descended into chants of “boos” and “shame” to the news, and immigrant rights volunteers in yellow vests shielded Mr. Abrego Garcia’s family members as they left the building.
Shortly after, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed a legal action known as a habeas petition in Federal District Court in Maryland seeking to stop his removal to Uganda. The petition claimed that the Trump administration had re-arrested him without first giving him the opportunity to express “fears of persecution and torture in that country.”
At an afternoon teleconference, Judge Paula Xinis, who has been dealing with Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case for nearly five months, said she planned to “move as fast as is just” in considering his petition.
Judge Xinis asked his lawyers and Justice Department prosecutors to propose by Tuesday morning a schedule for briefings and a hearing to consider questions such as whether Mr. Abrego Garcia should be allowed to be deported to a country of his choice and whether he might face danger if sent to Uganda.
In the meantime, she declared, the government was barred from re-expelling Mr. Abrego Garcia, who is now being held in an ICE facility in Virginia. Given that the Justice Department lawyers on the case have a long history of flouting her orders, the judge made sure they understood her.
“Your clients,” she told them, referring to administration officials, “are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States.”
Over the weekend, his lawyers had accused the Trump administration of seeking to “coerce” a guilty plea from him on the charges of human smuggling that were brought against him in an indictment in June.
The lawyers said the administration had promised to send Mr. Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, where he could live freely as a legal resident, if he pleaded to the charges and agreed to serve whatever prison sentence he eventually received. Otherwise, the lawyers said, Trump officials said they would deport Mr. Abrego Garcia “halfway across the world” to Uganda, where, the lawyers said, “his safety and liberty would be under threat.”
Last week, Uganda joined other African nations in reaching an agreement with the United States to accept an unspecified number of migrants deported from the United States, who would not include people with criminal records or unaccompanied minors.
One of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, Sean Hecker, said after the detention that the threat of deportation came even as Costa Rica was willing to take him in as a refugee. “The government’s campaign of retribution continues because Mr. Abrego refuses to be coerced into pleading guilty to a case that should never have been brought,” he said.
Prosecutors in Nashville adamantly denied that they had sought to coerce a guilty plea, saying in a court filing on Monday that the accusations by Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers were “not true” and “dishonestly made.”
The secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, said on social media that the immigration authorities were “processing him for deportation.”
The Ugandan government said it had not received official communication from the U.S. government that Mr. Abrego Garcia would be sent there.
In a phone interview, Bagiire Vincent Waiswa, the permanent secretary of Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said questions about Mr. Abrego Garcia were based on speculation in the news media. “Unfortunately, in diplomacy, there has to be formal communication,” he said. “We don’t have any formal communication from the U.S. government.”
The arrest in Baltimore was the latest twist in a long-running saga that began this spring, when the Trump administration removed Mr. Abrego Garcia to a notorious terrorism prison in El Salvador, despite a court order that expressly barred him from being sent to the country. Then, after weeks of complaining that they were powerless to bring him back to U.S. soil, Trump officials did exactly that — not merely to correct their own mistake but to file criminal charges against him.
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have accused the Trump administration of prosecuting him in Nashville as part of a vindictive effort to punish him for daring to fight back against his original deportation. As part of their claims, the lawyers cited several derogatory statements made by Mr. Trump and some of his top aides, who labeled Mr. Abrego Garcia a “terrorist” and a member of the violent street gang MS-13 even though several federal judges have questioned the evidence supporting those assertions.
Still, the White House kept up its drumbeat of attacks on Monday, posting a cartoon image of Mr. Abrego Garcia on its official X account above a phrase reading, MS-13.
Earlier on Monday, as he arrived for his immigration check-in, Mr. Abrego Garcia was greeted by the cheers of dozens of supporters. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and his brother, Cesar, were by his side. Speaking to the crowd, he thanked the people who had stood with him and delivered an emotional plea to immigrants and the immigrant rights community to keep up the fight and not lose hope.
“Brothers and sisters, my name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” he said. “And I always want you to remember that today, I can say with pride, that I am free and have been reunited with my family.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a black, gray and white polo, appeared nervous when he first arrived. His eyes shifted from reporters to rally goers, and he took a deep breath. His voice broke as he described how the memories of his family and playing with his children on a trampoline had sustained him while he was detained at the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
But he held back his tears and finished his statement with resolve. He said those moments would continue to fuel him as he continued his legal battles and reminded the audience that his case was not about one immigrant family but the many targeted under the Trump administration’s crackdown.
“To all of the families who have also suffered separations or who live under the constant threat of being separated,” he said, “I want to tell you that even though this injustice is hurting us hard, we must not lose hope.”
He continued: “God is with us, and God will never leave us. God will bring justice to all of the injustice.”
As he climbed the steps to the federal building, with immigration agents around, the scene turned chaotic. Mr. Abrego Garcia bowed his head as he slowly walked into the building. The crowd chanted “ICE go home” and “Sí se puede,” or “yes you can” in Spanish.
Musinguzi Blanshe contributed reporting from Kampala, Uganda.
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.
Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
The post Abrego Garcia Detained Again After Government Signaled It Would Re-Deport Him appeared first on New York Times.
