Abrego Garcia, free again, faces new Monday arrest deadline

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, released from jail Friday, now faces a new Monday deadline to check in with ICE, where the government has told him he could face a quick deportation to Uganda — a country to which his lawyers say he has no ties.

The lawyers said that threat appears to be part of a strategy to coerce Mr. Abrego Garcia to plead guilty to embarrassing criminal charges. They’ve offered to let him be deported to Costa Rica if he does agree, the lawyers said in new court filings.

It’s the latest turn for Mr. Abrego Garcia, who became the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation push after his March arrest and wrongful ouster to El Salvador — his home country, but an immigration judge had said he could not be deported there.

He was freed from jail in Tennessee on Friday, after a judge ruled the migrant-smuggling criminal case against him doesn’t rise to the level of threat to keep him behind bars until his trial.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had initially planned to quickly arrest him again but another federal judge in Maryland had ordered the agency not to do so. Judge Paula Xinis said ICE wrongly arrested Mr. Abrego Garcia on March 12, so it had to restore him to the status he was before that — in other words, free in the community.

But that doesn’t block him from being rearrested after that, ICE argues.

Charles Wall, ICE’s principal legal adviser, said in emails to Mr. Abrego Garcia’s legal team that the migrant must check in with ICE on Monday in Maryland, and notified them of his possible third-country deportation to Uganda.

The Trump administration accuses him of being a member of MS-13, as well as part of a host of other criminal behavior. He has only been charged with the smuggling offense, to which he has pled not guilty.

Mr. Abrego Garcia has already made his way back to Maryland, where he met Sunday morning with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who has become Mr. Abrego Garcia’s most prominent defender.

He said the illegal immigrant has been subject to a “long and torturous nightmare.”

“The federal courts and public outcry forced the administration to bring Abrego García back to Maryland, but Trump’s cronies continue to lie about the facts in his case and they are engaged in a malicious abuse of power as they threaten to deport him to Uganda – to block his chance to defend himself against the new charges they brought,” the senator said after the meeting.

Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, meanwhile, said the threat of a Uganda deportation and the carrot of a Costa Rica deportation are more evidence that the government has engaged in a “vindictive” prosecution. They have asked that the judge in the criminal case toss the charges.

Mr. Abrego Garcia is in the U.S. without a legal visa.

He was ordered deported in 2019 but had been set free because an immigration judge said he faced persecution from a gang if he was sent back to his home country of El Salvador.

Despite that, ICE picked him up on March 12, and three days later he was sent to El Salvador, where he was first placed in that country’s terrorist prison, then later moved to another prison.

His family mounted a legal battle that led to Judge Xinis ordering the government to get him back. She said his arrest and deportation were unlawful.

The administration resisted, but behind the scenes it reinvestigated a previous case where Mr. Abrego Garcia was caught transporting what police believed to be illegal immigrants in 2022. The Justice Department won an indictment on smuggling charges then brought Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.

Prosecutors had asked that he be detained in Tennessee, where the criminal case was brought, pending trial.

Judge Waverly Crenshaw ruled that he didn’t rise to the level of danger or risk of flight needed to warrant pretrial detention.

Homeland Security then said it would immediately arrest him and could begin deportation proceedings to send him to another country, but that’s when Judge Xinis stepped in.

She said since his March arrest on the streets in Maryland was unlawful, the government needed to free him altogether. She has also questioned whether he is in fact a member of MS-13.

Homeland Security has said not only is he part of the gang — a conclusion shared by an immigration judge in 2019, and by the Prince George’s County police gang unit — but says he was also implicated in a murder in El Salvador before he came to the U.S.

Prosecutors have also raised vague allegations that he solicited photos of an underage girl here in the U.S.

Ms. Abrego Garcia’s wife also petitioned for a domestic violence protection order — though she now has been vocal in pushing for her husband’s return and release.