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, his lawyer said.
The move, at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, 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.
Over the weekend, his lawyers 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 that the administration had promised to send him 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.”
The arrest in Baltimore was only 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.
As he arrived for his immigration check-in in Baltimore on Monday, Mr. Abrego Garcia was greeted by the cheers of dozens of supporters at the federal building in Baltimore. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and his brother, Cesar, were by his side. Speaking in front of 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.
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