Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to an El Salvadorian prison in March, has been taken into the custody of immigration authorities just days after his release from pretrial detention ahead of his trial on charges of human trafficking.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer announced to a crowd outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Baltimore Field Office on Monday that his client had been detained after being ordered last week to report there.
Garcia’s wrongful deportation earlier this year—which came despite a direct court order that prohibited his removal to El Salvador—has become a flashpoint case for the Administration in its sweeping mass deportation effort.
Read more: The Legal and Political Battle Over Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Deportation
After his return to the United States, he was arrested on charges of human trafficking based on evidence gleaned from bodycam footage of a traffic stop.
The detention comes just two days after Abrego Garcia’s lawyers accused the Trump Administration in a court filing of trying to “coerce” their client to plead guilty to criminal charges of human trafficking or face deportation to Uganda, a country he has never been to.
In a motion for dismissal of the charges against him, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said the federal government presented a last-ditch plea deal on Thursday, the day before he was due to be released from pre-trial detention. In it, prosecutors said he would be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to charges of smuggling undocumented immigrants across the United States.
Read more: The Trump Administration Could Have Fought to Deport Abrego Garcia in 2019. It Passed on the Chance
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers declined to keep Abrego Garcia in jail, but agreed to convey the offer of a plea bargain to their client. But the court filing states that “within minutes” of his release on Friday from a jail in Tennessee, Abrego’s counsel was informed by ICE that he would be deported to Uganda and “ordered him to report to ICE’s Baltimore Field Office Monday.”
“There can be only one interpretation of these events: the DOJ, DHS, 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 court filing read. “The same drive for retribution that fueled this criminal case evidently caused a dramatic change in the government’s position with respect to third-country removal.”
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