LANGLEY PARK, Md. — The fight by his family, his union and others to force the U.S. government to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Maryland union apprentice sheet metal worker deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT megaprison, is gaining support. The courageous response of his wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, and solidarity from his union, SMART, the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, are setting an example for working people and unions everywhere.
On March 12, after working his shift, Abrego Garcia picked up his 5-year-old son from his grandmother’s house and began driving home to Beltsville. He was stopped for what he thought was going to be a routine traffic violation and called his wife.
In March 2019 Abrego Garcia was picked up by the police for the “crime” of looking for construction work in a Home Depot parking lot, a place the police claimed was a gang hangout. After seven months in jail, a judge freed him, barring him from being deported to El Salvador.
Yet these same gang allegations were given as a reason to arrest Abrego Garcia this time. A few minutes later Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, got a call from the Department of Homeland Security telling her she had 10 minutes to pick up her son before they brought Child Protective Custody to take him. She arrived to find her husband sitting on a curb in handcuffs. Denied due process and the right to a hearing, he was sent to a detention center and deported.
Vasquez Sura told a packed press conference at the community office of Casa de Maryland April 4 that she learned that Abrego Garcia had been flown to El Salvador and incarcerated in CECOT from a photo she happened to see a few days later.
“The men were bent over on the ground with their heads down and their arms on their heads,” she said. “None of their faces were visible. There was one man who had two scars on his head and tattoos that looked similar to Kilmar’s. I zoomed in to get a closer look. My heart sank. It was Kilmar.
“My husband was abducted by the U.S. government,” she said. “To all those workers and families who find themselves in the same situation, I am also fighting for them.
“We all need to imagine if this was to happen to you when you drove home from work — taken into custody, illegally, deported and not being able to reach out to your loved ones, without any sign of due process, a pillar with which this country was founded,” said Michael Coleman, the general president of SMART. “We will stay with you, we will organize, we will rally, we will fight until justice is served, until Kilmar comes home.”
Some 20 national leaders and members of SMART Local 100, the local Abrego Garcia was a member of, joined dozens of supporters at the press conference holding signs saying, “I stand with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.”
Initially Immigration and Customs Enforcement claimed he was a gang member, but in face of protest, immigration authorities admitted his deportation was “an administrative error.” But, they said, there was nothing they could do about it now that he was gone.
Court orders Abrego Garcia returned
The family’s challenge to the arrest and deportation was brought before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis April 4. She ruled the deportation was a flagrant violation of a court order that he be allowed to stay in the U.S. “As defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador,” she wrote.
She ordered the government to have Abrego Garcia back in the U.S. by the end of April 7.
The administration is ratcheting up anti-immigrant rhetoric and moves to expand facilities to incarcerate workers in the future, whether in the U.S., the Guantánamo base on Cuban soil or at CECOT. Their aim is to intimidate the millions of workers in the U.S. who have no papers, reinforce their second-class status and intensify their exploitation. This is a bipartisan policy aimed at dividing the working class and meeting the needs of profit-driven employers.
But millions of workers have gotten to know immigrant fellow workers over the years. Their kids go to the same schools. They go to the same churches, and they work together to strengthen their unions. More unions today are standing up for their members whether they have papers or not.
At a rally outside the hearing, members of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades carried signs that read “One union, one family, one fight.” and “Our union stands with our brother Kilmar Abrego Garcia in SMART union, because an injury to one is an injury to all.”
The Justice Department has challenged Xinis’ ruling. They say the U.S. and its courts have “no authority” to make a sovereign country — El Salvador — release Abrego Garcia.