Federal immigration authorities took custody of Kilmar Abrego Garcia early Monday morning and he is expected to be deported to Africa or Central America.
Abrego Garcia, an illegal migrant from El Salvador, was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after checking into a detention center in Baltimore, Maryland, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Salvadoran national has become one of the biggest faces of the Trump administration’s deportation agenda after being sent back to his home country earlier this year and then returned to face human smuggling charges.
“Today, ICE law enforcement arrested Kilmar Abrego Garcia and are processing him for deportation,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in a post on Monday. “President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator to terrorize American citizens any longer.”
Shortly before walking into the ICE field office on Monday, the alleged gangbanger addressed a crowd of supporters who had gathered outside.
“To all the families who have been separated or to all the families who have been threatened with family separation, this administration has hit us hard, but I want to tell you guys something,” Abrego Garcia said in Spanish, requiring an English translator. “God is with us and God will never leave us. God will bring justice to all of the injustice we are suffering.”
Beside Abrego Garcia as he spoke was his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who had repeatedly accused him of domestic abuse before he was first deported from the U.S.
Federal immigration authorities first deported Abrego Garcia — who had been living unlawfully in the U.S. for years — to his home country of El Salvador in March, where he briefly stayed at the country’s infamous CECOT mega-prison. He became a major name after the public discovered he was previously granted a withholding of removal order by a judge that prohibited his removal to El Salvador, prompting outcry from Democrats who repeatedly demanded he be returned to the U.S.
The Trump administration facilitated his return to the U.S. in June for him to face human smuggling charges. Over the course of nearly a decade, Abrego Garcia allegedly made more than 100 trips across the U.S., smuggling illegal migrants, drugs and guns, according to a grand jury indictment.
The Salvadoran’s human smuggling charges stem from a Tennessee Highway Patrol stop in 2022. During the traffic stop, officers suspected Abrego Garcia of human smuggling after noticing that none of eight other passengers he was driving had any luggage, and all of them claimed Abrego Garcia’s address as their own.
The illegal migrant was released from a Tennessee jail on Friday, where he immediately returned to his residence in the Baltimore area. Federal immigration authorities have since offered him a choice: plead guilty to the human smuggling charges and be deported to Costa Rica after serving his sentence or else face deportation to Uganda, according to his attorneys.
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