Kilmar Abrego Garcia, center, accompanied by his attorney, was released from the Putnam County, Tennessee, Jail and headed home to Maryland on Friday. (Photo by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose wrongful deportation to a prison in El Salvador brought widespread public scrutiny of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown tactics, was released from a rural Tennessee jail Friday, five months after being detained while driving to his Maryland home.
Abrego was to be escorted by the U.S. Marshals Service back to Maryland, where he must report to pretrial services by 10 a.m. Monday, according to court documents. He will also be under the supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which could choose to detain him.
While the release “brings some relief … we all know that he is far from safe,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego’s attorneys, in a prepared statement Friday. “ICE detention or deportation to an unknown third country still threaten to tear his family apart.”
A Maryland court order in a separate case requires that Abrego be given 72 hours notice if the government plans to send him to a “third country.”
An order filed Friday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Tennessee noted that “should Abrego be taken into ICE custody following his return to Maryland” the government “shall ensure that, while Abrego remains in ICE custody, he has access to his attorneys, both physically and via telephone, to allow Abrego to prepare for trial in this case.”
Abrego will also be subject to electronic location monitoring and placed in the custody of his brother, the order noted.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in a social media statement, called Abrego’s release a “new low,” wrongly ascribing the decision to release him to a Maryland judge.
“Activist liberal judges have attempted to obstruct our law enforcement every step of the way in removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from our country,” the statement said. “We will not stop fighting till this Salvadoran man faces justice and is OUT of our country.”
But praise for Abrego’s release poured in Friday from Maryland officials, including Gov. Wes Moore (D) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) who called Abrego’s release a victory of due process for all. Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s) called Abrego’s release “proof that due process still matters inAmerica.”
Abrego, in a prepared statement released by the immigrants’ rights group CASA, thanked those who supported him and worked for his release, and called Friday “a very special day because I have seen my family for the first time in more than 160 days.”
Abrego, as the Tennessee court refers to him, was dispatched to El Salvador after being detained March 12 by ICE officers in Maryland, where he has lived with his wife and children and works as an apprentice sheet metal worker.
A government prosecutor later conceded his deportation was an error: Abrego, who entered the country illegally as a teen, was the subject of an immigration court order barring his removal to his home country of El Salvador, where he said he feared gang violence.
After being held for months in El Salvador, despite courts all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court ordering his returne, Abrego was returned to Tennessee in June to face human smuggling charges that prosecutors say are tied to a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop.
Abrego was neither cited nor arrested when he was pulled over by Tennessee Highway Patrol officers with nine passengers in his vehicle. Prosecutors now allege the stop was part of a human smuggling operation in which Abrego was paid to transport immigrants illegally in the United States to points around the country.
Abrego has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His attorneys petitioned to have the human smuggling charges dismissed, calling the case baseless and little more than “vindictive prosecution.” The federal judge in his case in Tennessee has yet to rule on that motion.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Like others who have worked on the case, Van Hollen said Abrego’s releases if far from the end of the fight.
“While I have no doubt the Administration will continue its attempts to undermine Mr. Abrego Garcia’s rights, we will continue fighting to see them maintained — because due process in this case does not end with his release,” Van Hollen said in a statement. “Mr. Abrego Garcia must continue to be allowed to defend himself in court, where the Trump Administration must make its case before taking any further action against him.
“This is a matter that’s greater than just this one case or one man – if one person’s rights are denied, then the rights of all of us are at risk,” he said.
– This story first appeared in Tennessee Lookout, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: [email protected].
Comments