A federal judge is scheduled to hold a hearing Friday in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man the Trump administration admitted it accidentally sent to a notorious megajail in El Salvador.
Garcia — a protected legal resident who has been living in Maryland since 2011 and is originally from El Salvador — was sent to El Salvador on March 15 because of what the Trump administration called an “administrative error” in court filings Monday.
Garcia and his wife — Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, who is a U.S. citizen — filed a lawsuit last week asking that the judge order the government to return him to the United States. The couple, who have a 5-year-old son, are also asking the government to cease payments to the operators of the maximum-security Terrorist Confinement Center where he is detained, known by its Spanish acronym CECOT.
“Not only was Plaintiff Abrego Garcia removed to El Salvador in direct violation of federal law, but to make matters worse, Defendants are paying the government of El Salvador a sum of money to incarcerate him in the infamous CECOT prison, where he is being subjected to torture and an imminent risk of death,” Garcia’s attorney wrote in their petition.
The hearing is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET Friday in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The Trump administration argued Monday that U.S. courts do not have the authority to seek Garcia’s extradition. It also repeatedly accused Garcia of being a member of the gang MS-13.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday that “the individual in question is a member of the brutal MS-13 gang — we have intelligence reports that he is involved in human trafficking.”
High ranking officials in the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, have also alleged this week that Garcia was an MS-13 member.
Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, has denied the government’s claims that he is affiliated with the gang. Instead, Garcia came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2011 to flee gang violence, Sandoval-Moshenberg said, adding that gang members threatened to kill him in an attempt to extort his parents. His attorney also noted that Garcia does not have a criminal record in the U.S. or El Salvador.
“First of all, if they thought he committed a crime, they could arrest him and try to convict him of that crime,” Sandoval-Moshenberg told MSNBC on Wednesday. “Second of all, if they thought he was deportable on the basis of his gang membership, they could have brought charges in the immigration court.”
“They did none of those things. They just stuck him on a plane,” he added.
Sandoval-Moshenberg accused the government of not even being “willing to ask the government of El Salvador to turn him back over to our custody.”
“Honestly, I expect that if we made a good faith ask to the government of El Salvador. I think there’s a high likelihood that the government of El Salvador would actually accede to that request,” he said Wednesday. “It’s amazing to me that they haven’t even so much as picked up the phone to just ask for this man back.”
Garcia’s deportation appears to coincide with the departure of three planes carrying noncitizens to El Salvador on March 15, whom the Trump administration accused of being Venezuelan gang members.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the prison last week. She posed for a photo-op in front of prison cells packed with the deported men, whose heads were forcibly shaved by authorities and were shirtless.
