A Maryland boy’s imprisonment is under investigation after the Trump administration revealed in court papers Monday evening that it sent him to a maximum security prison in El Salvador by mistake.
Kilmer Abrego-Garcia’s imprisonment was an inevitable “administrative problem”, the authorities said, after Abrego-Garcia’s prosecutor asked a court to order the Trump administration to transfer him to the United States.
White House officials have since defended the imprisonment, saying the error was trifling because Abrego-Garcia is a Peruvian regional who could have been deported anyway because he had no legal standing in the U. S. and allegedly has ties to the MS-13 gang.
Vice President JD Vance called the deportee a” convicted MS-13 gang member” and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he was an” MS-13 ring leader” who was “also engaged in human trafficking”.
What is Abrego-Garcia’s history?
Abrego-Garcia is a member of El Salvador who entered the country improperly around 2012 and settled in Maryland, where his older brother lived.
He has worked in construction since existing in the U. S. and is a full-time sheet steel assistant, according to his lawyer.
In 2019, Abrego-Garcia married a U. S. resident who had two children from a past relationship. The couple had a second child who is now 5 years older and has been diagnosed with autism.
When was he initially detained?
Abrego-Garcia was apprehended with three people at a Home Depot in March 2019 and appeared before an emigration determine for a bond hearing the following month.
At the time, the Department of Homeland Security alleged he was affiliated with MS-13 and that he was a threat to the area and should be imprisoned.
DHS presented two types that documented that an agent alleged Abrego-Garcia was a group member. The immigration judge determined the kinds were credible enough to keep him in confinement.
Why was Abrego-Garcia released in 2019?
While he was in confinement, he applied for hospital and for a position known as “withholding of removal”, saying a local group called Barrio 18 has long been tormenting him and his home in El Salvador because of his parents ‘ past attractive papusa business.
An immigration judge denied his prison state because it was outside the one-year control that workers have to make the state upon entering the U. S.
The judge did, however, offer Abrego-Garcia withholding of treatment on Oct. 10, 2019, saying he established that “it was more likely than not that he would be persecuted by groups in El Salvador because of a secured ground”.
The prosecutor released him from prison, ruling that he was not to be deported to El Salvador and that he must check in with U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement periodically. Abrego-Garcia’s prosecutor said he has been totally cooperative with that purchase.
Is he a’ convicted’ MS-13 group part?
Abrego-Garcia has never been charged or convicted of any violence in the U. S. or any other state, his attorney said.
The emigration judge presiding over his bond hearing said, however, that DHS had a trusted agent who verified his “gang account, position, and group brand” and that the information was” sufficient to support that the Respondent is a gang member”.
That finding is not a criminal conviction but rather an observation that an immigration judge within the Department of Justice made in determining that Abrego-Garcia should be denied bond while he was being detained for living in the country illegally.
Abrego-Garcia has vehemently denied any affiliation with MS-13 and said in court filings that he has never been presented with evidence, aside from the informant’s accusation and a note about him wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, that he could refute. He said he has asked multiple local and federal agencies for it.
” The U. S. government has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation”, his attorney wrote.
Why was he erroneously deported to El Salvador?
Trump administration officials touted that they deported three planes ‘ worth of Venezuelan and Salvadoran gang members on March 15 to El Salvador to be held in the country’s infamous terrorism confinement center known as CECOT.
The first two planes, according to an ICE official named Robert Cerna, deported alleged Tren de Aragua members in response to President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority that gives the president the power to bypass all other immigration rules to deport people immediately. Cerna said Abrego-Garcia was on the third flight.
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The Alien Enemies Act only applied to Venezuelan Tren de Aragua members, but in a separate court case challenging Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, Cerna stated that” all individuals on that third plane had Title 8 final removal orders and thus were not removed solely on the basis” of the act.
Abrego-Garcia could have appeared before an immigration judge who could have ordered him deported, but his attorney said his client was improperly denied the ability to go through that process.
