Washington — Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being processed for deportation to Uganda, the Department of Homeland Security said, after he was taken into custody Monday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, days after his release from criminal custody.
Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, was mistakenly deported to his home country in March and held in a notorious Salvadoran prison for months before being returned to the U.S. in June where he was jailed on federal human smuggling charges. A judge ruled that he should be released from detention ahead of a trial set for January.
Abrego Garcia was freed from pretrial detention last Friday. CBS News reported on Saturday that his attorneys were then sent a court-required notice of his potential deportation to Uganda. He arrived at the ICE facility on Monday morning to check in, speaking in Spanish to supporters who had gathered in a show of support outside of the facility.
“There was no need for them to take him into ICE detention. He was already on electronic monitoring from the U.S. Marshals Service and basically on house arrest,” his attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him. To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”
The Department of Homeland Security claims Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his family denies.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement that ICE had arrested Abrego Garcia and was “processing him for deportation.” DHS said he is “being processed for removal to Uganda.” The U.S. reached an agreement with Uganda to accept some deportees last week.
“President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator to terrorize American citizens any longer,” Noem said.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said Abrego Garcia filed a new lawsuit Monday challenging his confinement and deportation to any country “unless and until he had a fair trial in an immigration court.” In a legal filing over the weekend, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said he was offered a plea deal that included deportation to Costa Rica. His attorneys said they then received a notice of his possible deportation to Uganda. Sandoval-Moshenberg clarified Monday that Abrego Garcia had stated that he was willing to accept refugee status in Costa Rica.
“The fact that they’re holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty to a crime is such clear evidence that they’re weaponizing the immigration system in a manner that is completely unconstitutional,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said Monday.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said an ICE officer did not answer when asked about the reason for Abrego Garcia’s detention and would not say which detention center he would be taken to, or commit to providing paperwork.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who traveled to El Salvador to advocate for the return of Abrego Garcia earlier this year, met with him Sunday. Van Hollen said in a statement that he was glad to “welcome him back to Maryland after what has been a long and torturous nightmare.”
“The federal courts and public outcry forced the Administration to bring Ábrego García back to Maryland, but Trump’s cronies continue to lie about the facts in his case and they are engaged in a malicious abuse of power as they threaten to deport him to Uganda — to block his chance to defend himself against the new charges they brought,” Van Hollen said. “As I told Kilmar and his wife Jennifer, we will stay in this fight for justice and due process because if his rights are denied, the rights of everyone else are put at risk.”
An immigration judge ruled in 2019 that Abrego Garcia may not be deported to El Salvador because he feared persecution by local gangs in the Central American country.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore advocated for due process for Abrego Garcia on Sunday, saying on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that “I just simply want a court and a judge to decide what is going to be the future fate of this case and all cases like this, and not simply the president of the United States or the secretary of homeland security who is trying to be judge, juror, prosecutor and executioner inside this case.”
contributed to this report.
Kaia Hubbard is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.
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