What are the separate allegations
against him?
Two
other allegations have surfaced since Mr Albrego Garcia was deported.
In
2021, his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, filed a protective order petition
against him, alleging that he had physically attacked her on multiple
occasions, according to documents shared by the
US Department of Homeland Security.
Ms
Vasquez Sura later said in a statement on 16 April that she had decided not to
follow through with the court process at the time and that she and her husband
"were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including
by going to counseling".
She
described her husband as "a loving partner and father" and has
repeatedly denied he is an MS-13 gang member.
On
15 April, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also accused Mr Abrego
Garcia of involvement in human trafficking.
She
appeared to be referencing a report in The Tennessee Star, a conservative news
website, which claimed Mr Abrego Garcia was detained by a Tennessee highway
patrol officer on suspicion of human trafficking in December 2022. …suspicion of… (remember that part)
A
report by the Department of Homeland Security said he was stopped for speeding
and not staying in his lane.
There
were eight other people in the car without luggage, the report said, which led
the officer to suspect it could be a case of human trafficking.
However,
there was no criminal case lodged against Mr Abrego Garcia.
"Kilmar
worked in construction and sometimes transported groups of workers between job
sites, so it's entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving
with others in the vehicle," Ms Vasquez Sura said about the incident.
From El Salvador to Maryland
According
to court filings, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was born in July 1995 in the
neighborhood of Los Nogales in El Salvador, where he helped his family run a
business making pupusas, a local cuisine. He has said he and his family
received death threats and were extorted by the local gang Barrio 18.
He
crossed the border illegally near McAllen, Texas, in March 2012 when he was 16
years old, according to
documents posted on X by Attorney General Pam Bondi. From the border,
Abrego Garcia made his way to Maryland to live with his brother, who is a U.S.
citizen.
In
2016, he met his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who is a U.S. citizen. They had a
young son together, and Vasquez Sura has two children from a previous marriage.
Abrego Garcia was a sheet metal apprentice and a member of the local union.
A 2019 arrest and gang allegations
Abrego
Garcia was arrested in March 2019 in a Home Depot parking lot in Hyattsville
with three other men for “loitering.” His attorneys said he was there looking
for day labor work. Police assessed that he was a gang member at the time, according
to arrest documents. He had no criminal record at the time, which the
documents also state.
When Abrego
Garcia was arrested, he had just under an ounce of marijuana on him, according
to the Hyattsville Police Department. The drugs were seized but
authorities did not file charges.
One of the men
arrested that day was known to the Prince George’s County Police Department as
an MS-13 gang member, according to a document titled “gang field interview
sheet.”
Police
interviewed the men, including Abrego Garcia. The document said he was wearing
“a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears
and mouth of the presidents” on the bills. The officers said such clothing was “indicative of the Hispanic
gang culture.”
The officers
also said they consulted with a “past proven and reliable confidential source,”
who “advised” that Abrego Garcia was an active gang member who had the moniker
“Chele.”
His attorneys
noted Abrego Garcia was not charged and said in court documents that “there is
no reliable evidence in the record to support” that he is a member of MS-13,
adding that the allegation “is based on hearsay relayed by a confidential
source” and the clothing he was wearing.
The Prince
George’s County Police Department said multiple members of its gang unit
interviewed the four men after their arrest.
Its detectives
“had reasonable suspicion, based upon their training and experience” to say
that three of the men, including Abrego Garcia, “displayed traits associated
with MS-13 gang culture,” the department said.
“This was based
on tattoos, clothing, as well as information from a source,” police said.
Police did not
arrest any of the men, said they have not interacted with Abrego Garcia again and
have not received any new intelligence related to him.
One of the
detectives who interviewed the men was former officer Ivan Mendez, who was
suspended in April 2019 as part of an unrelated matter, police said. Mendez
pleaded guilty to “misconduct in office” in that unrelated incident.
As a result, the
department proposed that Mendez’s employment be terminated, which he accepted,
a statement from police said. Mendez was terminated from the department in
December 2022.
Hyattsville
officers knew there was an ongoing murder investigation in Prince George's
County when they arrested the four individuals in the Home Depot parking
lot.
Police
identified two men, one of whom was Abrego Garcia, as having been previously
detained in a murder investigation, according to a Department of Homeland
Security document from 2019. Abrego Garcia denied being connected to a murder
investigation, the documents say, and he was never charged.
After Abrego
Garcia was arrested, he was taken to the Prince George’s County Police
Department’s office for questioning in that homicide investigation along with
the three other individuals. After questioning he was turned over to ICE.
The release of documents on April 16 was the fullest
detailing of the circumstance around his arrest and came after weeks of
pressure on administration officials to prove its contention that Abrego Garcia
was a member of the MS-13 gang.
The Department
of Homeland Security also posted on social media that Abrego Garcia’s wife had
received a temporary protective order against him in 2021. Vasquez Sura did not
appear for the hearing and the case was ultimately dismissed. She released a
statement explaining what happened.
“After surviving
domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after
a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order in case things
escalated,” Vasquez Sura said in a statement Wednesday. “Things did not
escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process.”
“No one is
perfect, and no marriage is perfect. That is not a justification for ICE’s
action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to
be protected from deportation,” she added.
The
administration has also accused Abrego Garcia of being involved in “human
trafficking,” but did not release evidence of the claim until April 18, when
the Department of Homeland Security released a report detailing a traffic stop
in Tennessee in 2022 where an officer suspected Abrego Garcia of human
trafficking while driving a vehicle with eight other people.
Abrego Garcia
said the men were traveling for construction work, according to the report.
Because there was no luggage in the vehicle, the officer on the scene suspected
it could be human trafficking, it said.
The Tennessee
Highway Patrol said in a statement that in 2022 Abrego Garcia was stopped for
speeding on I-40. The agency contacted federal law enforcement, which decided
not to detain him, the statement said.
When the Highway
Patrol ran his license, it discovered it was expired and there was a note to
call federal authorities because of his alleged affiliation with MS-13
following the incident in 2019, a senior Tennessee law enforcement official
said.
When the agency
called ICE, it declined to pick him up and take him into custody, the official
said. He was released without charges.
The interaction
between Abrego Garcia and the agency was “cordial,” the official said, adding
that Abrego Garcia said the other men in the car were traveling between
construction jobs.
“Kilmar worked
in construction and sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites,
so it’s entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with
others in the vehicle,” his wife said in a statement. “He was not charged with
any crime or cited for any wrongdoing. Unfortunately, Kilmar is currently
imprisoned without contact with the outside world, which means he cannot
respond to the claims or defend himself.”
What was his immigration
status?
After his 2019
arrest, Abrego Garcia was handed over to immigration authorities and placed in
deportation proceedings.
Vasquez Sura
said she and her husband testified in his defense against the allegations that
he was a gang member and sought his release, according to court documents. She
described the process as “emotional and unfair.”
Despite their
testimony, a judge denied Abrego Garcia bond after his arrest outside the Home
Depot, documents released by the Justice Department show.
“Although the
Court is reluctant to give evidentiary weight to the Respondent’s clothing as
an indication of gang affiliation, the fact that a ‘past, proven, and reliable
source of information’ verified the Respondent’s gang membership, rank, and
gang name is sufficient to support that the Respondent is a gang member, and
the Respondent has failed to present evidence to rebut that assertion,”
Immigration Judge Elizabeth Kessler wrote in 2019. Her decision was upheld by
another judge in an appeals hearing.
Kessler also
noted there was a seeming discrepancy regarding why the government arrested
him. One form stated it was in relation to a murder investigation, she wrote,
while another states police approached him “because he and others were
loitering outside of Home Depot.” Abrego Garcia responded that “there is no
reliable evidence in the record to support” that he is a member of MS-13 and
that the allegation “is based on hearsay relayed by a confidential source.”
Abrego Garcia
then filed for asylum and withholding of removal, a temporary form of legal
protection, so that he would not be deported to El Salvador. Before his 2019
hearing, authorities told the court that their evidence of Abrego Garcia’s gang
membership was limited to the “gang field interview sheet” from the Home Depot
arrest, and they had nothing further to add.
An immigration
judge barred Abrego Garcia from being sent to El Salvador, saying he proved he
had a “well-founded fear of future persecution” from local gangs. The court
granted withholding of removal as long as he checked in with authorities
annually, something he attested to doing in court filings. This gave him legal
status in the United States temporarily and allowed him to receive a work
permit.
ICE did not
appeal, and Abrego Garcia was released. He returned to his family, where he
resumed working and began a five-year apprenticeship program to become a
licensed journeyman, his wife wrote in an affidavit.
“We
really believed that the false accusations had been cleared up and that they
were behind us,” she wrote.
Deportation to El
Salvador
On March 12, Abrego
Garcia was pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers while he
was with his child on his way home from a worksite in Baltimore. He was on the
phone with his wife and told her he had pulled into the parking lot of an Ikea
when an officer “put his lights on.”
“I told him to
put me on speaker when he was talking with the police because he does not feel
confident speaking English,” Vasquez Sura wrote in a declaration provided to the court.
When an officer
got to Abrego Garcia’s car, according to Vasquez Sura, they told him to roll
down the windows and step out of the vehicle. Abrego Garcia told the
officer his son was in the back seat and had special needs. In a sworn
declaration, she says officers then hung up the call, and minutes later someone
called back, identified themself as a person with the Department of Homeland
Security, and told her she needed to get there in 10 minutes to pick up her son
or they would “call child protective services.”
When she
arrived, she said, Abrego Garcia was on the curb in handcuffs, and
officers on the scene claimed his “immigration status had changed,” Vasquez
Sura wrote.
“They asked me
if I wanted to say goodbye to Kilmar,” Vasquez Sura wrote. “Kilmar was crying
and I told him he would come back home because he hadn’t done anything wrong.”
He was arrested
by immigration authorities and transferred to facilities in Maryland, Louisiana
and Texas, the declaration said. During that time, Abrego Garcia spoke on the
phone with his wife five times. On March 15, he was sent to El Salvador.
“I never heard
from Kilmar again,” Vasquez Sura wrote.
On March 16, the
Salvadoran president posted
a video showing people being loaded off planes and sent to the CECOT
megaprison. Vasquez Sura said she recognized her husband in photos and video
from the prison where he was being dragged by guards, because of the scars on
his head and tattoos.
On March 24,
Vasquez Sura filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of her husband against the Trump
administration in the District of Maryland. The suit argued that because of the
2019 order barring him from being sent to El Salvador, the Trump administration
violated the law.
Abrego Garcia’s
team asked a judge to order the government to immediately request his release,
launching the ongoing legal battle over whether he will remain in a Salvadoran
prison or return to Maryland.
-------------------
And so, here we are. As a reminder:
 |
| Mr. Garcia, Ms. Vasquez-Sura and their infant child |
To be clear, Trump has been incredibly transparent about the fact that he has no interest in seeing Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to the United States because he, Trump, KNOWS WITHOUT EVIDENCE that Mr. Garcia is an "M-13 Gang Member."
To that, keep in mind, he has shown a complete and total lack of leadership in allowing Kristi Noem, Secretary/Treasurer, whatever, of "Homeland Security" to remove Mr. Garcia and making NO EFFORTS to bring him home to the United States.
