GREENBELT, Md. — “Today is 34 days after his disappearance and I stand here filled with a spirit that refuses to back down. I will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive,” Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, wife of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, told supporters prior to an April 15 court hearing in U.S. District Court here.
“I have found overwhelming support from our brothers and sisters in CASA, leaders and members of SMART and others who have supported us,” she said. Abrego Garcia is a member of his union, SMART, the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, as well as the immigrant rights group CASA de Maryland.
The 29-year old SMART Local 100 member has the full support of his union, both nationally and here. Other unions have also stepped forward to defend him and demand he be returned home, including the North American Building Trades Union. The Metropolitan Washington Council of the AFL-CIO urged union participation at the April 15 hearing.
The fight to bring Abrego Garcia home is a flashpoint in the fight against deportations and for defense of the rights of undocumented workers in the U.S. His case has special resonance in unions and industries where a large percentage of the workforce are immigrants, like in construction and in hotels and restaurants. It is an attack on the whole labor movement.
After working his shift as a sheet metal apprentice, Abrego Garcia picked up his 5-year-old son from his grandmother’s house March 12 and began driving home to Beltsville. Cops stopped him for what he thought was going to be a routine traffic infraction.
Instead, he was arrested and three days later, without any hearing or semblance of due process, deported to El Salvador where he was born and thrown into the notorious CECOT megaprison. Abrego Garcia is a legal resident of the U.S. and his removal was a flagrant violation of a standing court order barring him from deportation.
In March 2019 he had been picked up by police for the “crime” of looking for a construction job in a Home Depot parking lot, which cops claimed was a gang hangout. After a seven-month fight in court, he was freed.
Since Abrego Garcia’s abrupt deportation, the family has won a series of court decisions, from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to a Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court, holding the U.S. government must “facilitate” his return.
The government admitted that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error,” but claims it is powerless to rectify it.
Outside the courtroom here a crowd of some 150 supporters picketed and chanted, demanding Abrego Garcia’s return.
Judge Xinis said the government was refusing to follow the orders both she and the Supreme Court have issued. Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign protested that they have no control over what the sovereign government of El Salvador does with Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen, and can only facilitate any issue with “U.S.-side barriers.”
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who came to the U.S. for a White House meeting with President Donald Trump the day before the hearing, told the press he had no intention of releasing Abrego Garcia. “Of course, I’m not going to do it,” he said. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”
Judge Xinis ruled that much more needs to be found out about what the government knew, and when, and what they did or didn’t do. She ordered two weeks of “expedited” discovery to determine if the U.S. government is acting in good faith.
Many reporters noted that court rulings holding the executive branch of the U.S. government in contempt are extremely rare. “During the [Jimmy] Carter administration, then-Attorney General Griffin Bell was held in contempt for refusing to release files identifying Federal Bureau of Investigation informants who had infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party,” the Wall Street Journal noted.
This ruling came as part of the SWP’s historic victory against Washington’s unconstitutional attacks on the party, Black rights fighters, unionists and others.
“The more I hear and learn about this, the only just thing would be for Abrego Garcia to catch the first ride out of El Salvador,” Glen Forcey, a hotel worker and UNITE HERE Local 25 member, told the Militant. “They need to treat him right. The U.S. government made the mistake, not him.”
The outcome of this fight can be affected by the actions of workers, immigrants and native-born alike. It can strengthen the union movement.