After beating back a three-month, U.S. government-led effort to bury him in jail in El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. June 6. He was immediately thrown in jail in Nashville, Tennessee, held without bond, and allowed no visitors. The Justice Department indicted him on cooked up far-reaching felony charges — interstate human smuggling for financial gain between 2016 and 2025. He pled not guilty June 13.
On June 22 U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes described the government’s charges as suspect and ordered his release. She ruled that he was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community, undermining the government’s claim he is a gang member. The Justice Department immediately appealed her decision and Abrego Garcia remains in custody. His next hearing is set for June 25.
Abrego Garcia’s supporters organized a rally and press conference in downtown Nashville the day of his hearing. Vonda McDaniel, president of the Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, pledged it will not allow Abrego Garcia’s fight to “disappear in the shadows of a courtroom.”
“This is a clear attempt to criminalize Kilmar retroactively in order to justify what they did to him illegally,” McDaniel said, “and to intimidate other immigrants and workers who might dare to fight back when their rights are violated.”
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Abrego Garcia’s wife, along with his mother and brother, fellow union members, and the immigrant rights group CASA de Maryland he is a member of, are now waging their fight in Tennessee. They were joined at the press conference by the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
Vasquez Sura was only able to “visit” with her husband via a video screen — the first time she had seen him in three months. She told the rally about his message of solidarity to them. “To all the families fighting to be reunited after a family separation, or if you too are in detention, Kilmar wants you to have faith,” she said, “Keep praying and keep fighting.”
Like thousands of other workers subject to immigration raids and fast-track deportation, Abrego Garcia was denied his constitutional due process right to defend himself. His deportation also violated a 2019 court order barring his removal to El Salvador specifically because his life would be threatened if he returned there.
The Donald Trump administration fought a series of court orders — including from the U.S. Supreme Court — ruling he must be returned to the U.S.
The current case against him is built around a 2022 traffic stop when Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding in Putnam County, Tennessee. He was driving an SUV carrying eight other construction workers. He was issued a ticket for having an expired license, but not arrested nor charged with any crime.
The indictment, which Judge Holmes discounted as far-fetched and lacking any evidence, is part of the government’s campaign to smear Abrego Garcia and weaken his support.
It lists a number of allegations that he had made a whole series of similar “human smuggling” trips over years, as well as transporting firearms and drugs illegally purchased in Texas as a member of the notorious La Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13, gang. The indictment also claims Abrego Garcia was reprimanded by three co-conspirators for having “abused some of the female undocumented aliens” he transported. But the fact is Abrego Garcia has lived in Maryland with his wife and children for 13 years, where he works as a sheet metal apprentice and is a member of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Local 100.
Many similar fights
Abrego Garcia’s fight and the U.S. government’s vendetta against him has won national attention, but there are many other similar fights being waged today, as well as some important victories to build on.
On May 29, after three months of detention at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, Lewelyn “Auntie Lynn” Dixon, a lab technician at the University of Washington Medical Center and Service Employees International Union Local 925 member, won her freedom. Dixon, who is a permanent resident, had been seized by ICE agents and arrested in February at an airport on her way home from a visit to see her family in the Philippines.
The SEIU, along with Dixon’s family, friends and supporters, rallied outside of the Tacoma detention center and in solidarity events held in over eight locations across the country to coincide with her immigration hearing.
Another SEIU member, Cliona Ward, also won release from the Tacoma immigration jail on May 7. Originally from Ireland and a permanent U.S. resident for 30 years, Ward lives in Santa Cruz, California. Her freedom was announced after the hearing by Kayla Gomez, the political organizer for the SEIU South Bay and Central Coast chapters.
Farmworker activist and founder of the Familias Unidas por la Justicia union, Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, was detained March 25 and remains behind bars at the same ICE detention center in Tacoma. He is fighting to be released on bond until his hearing, currently set for November. His fight to be released and to stay in the U.S. has won support from the Sugarcane Workers Union of the Dominican Republic.
Union support for these fights, along with a call for amnesty for all undocumented immigrant workers in the U.S., helps strengthen and unify the working class.