A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to arrange for the return of a Maryland man to the US after he was mistakenly deported to a notorious El Salvador prison. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement expelled Kilmar Abrego Garcia last month despite an immigration judge's 2019 ruling that shielded him from deportation to his native El Salvador, where he faced likely persecution by local gangs, the AP reports. Before issuing her ruling, US District Judge Paula Xinis described Abrego Garcia's deportation as "an illegal act."
Xinis questioned why Abrego Garcia was sent to the prison in El Salvador, which observers say is rife with human rights abuses. "Why is he there, of all places?" the judge asked. The judge's ruling came shortly after Abrego Garcia's wife joined dozens of supporters at a rally in Hyattsville, Maryland, to call for her husband's immediate return. Jennifer Vasquez Sura, an American citizen, hasn't spoken to Abrego Garcia since he was flown to El Salvador last month and imprisoned. She urged her supporters to keep fighting for her husband "and all the Kilmars out there whose stories are still waiting to be heard." The campaign to reunite the couple will shift to a courtroom in Greenbelt, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC.
The White House has cast Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, as an MS-13 gang member and asserted that American courts lack jurisdiction over the matter because the Salvadoran national is no longer in the US. Abrego Garcia's attorneys have countered that there is no evidence he was in MS-13. The allegation is based on a confidential informant's claim in 2019 that Abrego Garcia was a member of a chapter in New York, where he has never lived. Abrego Garcia's deportation has been described by the White House as an "administrative error." He had a permit from the Department of Homeland Security to legally work in the US, said his attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg. He worked as a sheet metal apprentice and was pursuing his journeyman license.
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