Illegal expat Kilmar Abrego Garcia has no legal standing in the United States. He has admitted as many. However, it was still unlawful for the Trump administration to arrest him next month to his native land of El Salvador.
He is, as the liberal media call him, a” Maryland parents” with no criminal record, but his wife accused him of domestic violence, and an immigration judge concluded he was a part of MS-13.
President Donald Trump is right that a national court cannot compel the White House to return Abrego Garcia, but he does so in plainly violating a constitutional order by not even trying.
Officials, the news media, and many commentators had mischaracterized elements of Abrego Garcia’s situation. The confusion stems from the complicated characteristics of it, from how gently facts have flooded in, and from significantly divergent underlying viewpoints on immigration.
Some of Abrego Garcia’s supporters reject the notion that outlawed newcomers, as illegal immigrants, have no right to be in the U. S.
Although Abrego Garcia’s numerous offenses do not support the Trump administration’s disregard for the law and a federal court decision, which is perhaps more appropriate for public discussion.
Illegal access
Abrego Garcia was described as a “gang member with no constitutional right to be in our state” by Vice President JD Vance. Progressive critic Tim Miller wrote that Abrego Garcia was” a constitutional citizen” of the U. S.
One of Miller’s two states is false, and Vance is making an error.
Abrego Garcia was an illegal immigrant who was never a constitutional citizen. He acknowledged this during his 2019 imprisonment. Vance is best that he had” no constitutional right to be in our land”.
The legitimacy of Abrego Garcia’s MS-13 account is unclear. That was a realization by local and federal law enforcement officials, which was accepted by an immigration judge, but it was not proven in a criminal court of law.
Here are the information that we are aware of.
Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador over a decade ago and fraudulently entered the U. S. in 2012 at age 16 or 17. He claimed to have crossed the plains to reach the United States. He traveled to Prince George’s County, Maryland, where his two sons lived as lawful permanent residents. ( PG is a suburb of Washington, D.C., and contains some of the region’s most racially diverse and immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. )
Aside from a couple of prospects violations, Abrego Garcia avoided the focus of law enforcement for about seven years. Local officers in Hyattsville, Maryland, on March 28, 2019, approached Abrego Garcia and three other immigrants in the parking lot of Home Depot, a common location where expat men wait to be picked up for time labor like landscaping or home construction work.
The local authorities called Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to the field, where, according to an ICE statement, Abrego Garcia and the others “freely admitted being residents and citizens of El Salvador by beginning and that they were present in the United States fraudulently”.
Abrego Garcia was an illegal immigrant, so this is not really up for debate in any jury. He was not granted pardon, and never in his 13 times these did he have legal permission to be here.
Abrego Garcia was placed in custody until his imprisonment reading in April 2019.
In October 2019, an immigration prosecutor ordered Abrego Garcia deported. That imprisonment purchase always was overturned or expired. It also stands at this writing.
Why, then, did Abrego Garcia never leave the nation for the next five years? That involves the “withholding buy” issued at the same time as the imprisonment attempt by the same immigration judge in Baltimore.
Abrego Garcia claimed that he and his family had been the targets of intimidation, threats, and blackmail by a group called Barrio 18 and don’t safely return to El Salvador.
He argued he faced” a distinct possibility of future oppression” if he were returned to El Salvador.
The judge rejected Abrego Garcia’s attempt to use this accounts to argue for asylum, which would have given him legal standing, but federal law mandates that an asylum seeker must apply for asylum within a month of entering the country, so the judge rejected that claim.
But Abrego Garcia succeeded in convincing the prosecutor that returning to El Salvador was unsafe, and he won a “withholding get”. Abrego Garcia was not given permission to remain in the United States, but that order did forbid the federal government from sending him to El Salvador, which is precisely what the Trump administration obstructively did next month.
Withholding get
Withholding orders in 2019 left Department of Homeland Security with two options for expunging Abrego Garcia: to find a foreign land to give him to, or to try to persuade an immigration prosecutor to revoke the holding purchase.
There is no proven way to arrest illegal immigrants to a third land in most cases. The deportee would become an illegal immigrant there as well as a result of just dropping a Peruvian in Honduras, Spain, or Kyrgyzstan. To arrest Abrego Garcia while the holding purchase stood, the management would have had to negotiate an arrangement with some unusual authorities, such as Mexico. There is no proof that the United States sought an arrangement similar to that for Abrego Garcia.
To arrest Abrego Garcia to his residence country, the management would need to get the holding order rescinded. When Trump took office in 2025, ICE may include reexamined that withholding purchase, arguing that Barrio 18 no longer posed a threat to Abrego Garcia.
There is actual facts of Barrio 18’s declining existence and influence in El Salvador. Barrio 18 “has been significantly weakened in El Salvador following a global surveillance assault, launched by the Nayib Bukele authorities in March 2022,” according to InSight Crime, a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, in 2023. Safety forces have jailed over 10, 000 alleged Barrio 18 people during the assault, which has continued into 2023. Those who are still at huge have fled or entered covering.
Panama and Honduras are cooperating with the Bukele leadership to record, arrest, and reinstate Barrio 18 crew members. A part of Barrio 18 was detained in Spain last April and handed him over to El Salvador.
This latter operation, arguing in emigration court that his withholding order was no longer acceptable, is part of what administration critics say was Abrego Garcia’s expected process, a process ignored by the administration’s mass-deportation techniques and brushed aside as too costly by leading administration officials.
Instead, in March of this year, police stopped him while he was returning from work. They arrested him. He was taken to the Terrorism Confinement Center in San Salvador by DHS, who then took him on a plane with other Salvadoran illegal immigrants.
The MS-13 accusation
Being a terrorist confinement center is not enough to put an illegal immigrant in. The claim that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist rests on the Trump administration’s declaration that MS-13, a murderous gang, is a terrorist organization.
It’s a stretch to say there is evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, but it’s not.
Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at DHS, asserted four pieces of evidence that Abrego Garcia was part of MS-13.
She claimed on X on April 16:
“1. Garcia was discovered with rolls of cash and drugs when he was detained.
2. He was detained together with two other MS-13 members.
3. He was determined to be a member of MS-13 by two judges. That finding has not been disturbed.
4. When arrested he was wearing what is effectively MS-13’s uniform”.
The first claim, that “he was found with rolls of cash and drugs,” is a little deceptive. He did have over$ 1, 000 in cash on him, according to police reports, and local police say they saw someone in his party toss marijuana aside. However, nobody alleged that Abrego Garcia had marijuana in possession. In any event, by 2019, Maryland had decriminalized marijuana, and four loiterers in PG County smoking marijuana is hardly something that indicates gang membership.
Because the immigration judge was considering Abrego Garcia’s request to be freed on a$ 5, 000 bond, the outfit he wore in March 2019 was evidence in his immigration court hearings the following month. The judge denied that request in part because” the evidence shows he is a verified member of MS-13″.
The PG County Gang Unit was used by the immigration judge in place of the ICE statements. Gang Unit officers “observed 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 separate denominations”.
( It’s important to note that the news media and a federal judge incorrectly reported this as a” Bulls hat and hoodie” ). It was not a Bulls hoodie. )
According to the police report,” such clothing]is ] indicative of the Hispanic gang culture” and that the hoodie’s illustration stood for” see no evil, hear no evil, and say no evil.”
” Wearing the Chicago Bulls hat represents]that ] they are a member in good standing with the MS-13″, the police report also stated.
One of the men who were detained with Abrego Garcia had long been associated with PG police as a gang member, and the other had skull tattoos that read “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” and other gang tattoos.
Finally, one Gang Unit detective reported that a confidential informant described as” a past proven and reliable source of information”, said Abrego Garcia was” an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique”, also relaying his rank and his gang name of” Chele”.
The confidential-informant portion of the case has two potential flaws. First, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys claim the Westerns clique operates only in New York, where Abrego Garcia has never lived.
( This claim is not entirely accurate. ” Westerns” appear to have historically operated in many parts of the U. S. A 2023 article on MS-13 in a liberal outlet reported on Westerns ‘ activity in Los Angeles, for instance. )
Second, the detective in the Gang Unit who received the confidential informant’s testimony was fired from the police and charged with a crime after an ethics violation involving a prostitute he had hired.
At least one other problem hangs over the image of Abrego Garcia as a law-abiding” Maryland dad”.
Abrego Garcia was charged with domestic abuse. In May 2021, a state court granted Jennifer Vasquez, Abrego Garcia’s wife, a temporary restraining order against him based on her accusation that he “punched and scratched” her, ripped off her shirt, and “grabbed and bruised her”.
Vasquez is currently spearheading the campaign to win her husband’s return.
Righting wrongs
Although much of the above is unknown, these two facts are:
- Abrego Garcia was here illegally and had no legal right to remain in the U. S.
- Without a further hearing, the Trump administration’s sending of him to El Salvador was unlawful.
This first fact undermines much of the news media narrative about Abrego Garcia, including the demands that he be returned home. Underliesing that claim is a frequently stated but widely accepted notion in the news media that illegal immigrants should be permitted to stay here once they have established community or family ties.
This belief is not reflected in the law.
The second fact indicates that the Trump administration broke the law. No derogatory comments about Abrego Garcia can make the deportation to El Salvador legal. The withholding order remained even if he were a member of the MS-13, wife-beating, and drug-dealing gang. If the Trump administration thought the withholding order was wrong, or that the conditions had changed, it could have and should have argued as much in immigration court.
This is why a federal district court this month gave the Trump administration the order to have Abrego Garcia be brought back to the United States.
When the U. S. government breaks the law in a way that harms someone, it has a duty to rectify things.
The executive has a duty to do something when a federal court orders it to do it. The Supreme Court has tweaked that ruling, saying that Trump must “facilitate” getting Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia might be sent to a third nation by the DHS. Perhaps it could bring him back, get the withholding order rescinded, and then send him to El Salvador. However, leaving him alone is against the law.
SOCIAL SECURITY IS IN WORSE SHAPE THAN YOU THINK
Trump has stated that he will leave him alone, though. This is hard to justify since Trump seems to have the respect of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and Trump regularly brags about how much foreign leaders respect him. Trump appears to be able to say,” Bukele, give me Abrego Garcia,” and Bukele will do it, or Trump will have to come clean about not being respected by Third World leaders.
The administration is emphasizing information about Abrego Garcia’s violent past, his possible gang ties, and his illegal entry into the U. S. All of this pushes back on the media narrative of a peaceful” Maryland dad”, but none of it negates his right to due process and the administration’s obligation to follow the law.
