On June 27, Robert E. McGuire, acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, approved an emergency appeal by Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal apprentice and SMART union member from Maryland. Abrego Garcia is being held in immigration detention in Tennessee while fighting to stay in the U.S. with his wife and children. The judge ruled that instead of being released on bail, he would honor the unionist’s request to remain in jail.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney had requested this somewhat unprecedented action to prevent the Justice Department from grabbing and deporting him.
Abrego Garcia had been returned to the U.S. after Immigration and Customs Enforcement flew him to El Salvador where he was imprisoned for three months amid mounting national attention and a U.S. Supreme Court order for the government to “facilitate” his return. He has pled not guilty to trumped-up felony charges, which even the immigration judge in his case said are “far-fetched.”
If arrested by the Department of Homeland Security this time, Abrego Garcia could have been immediately deported to South Sudan, a prison at the U.S. military base in Djibouti, or any of countless other immigration prisons abroad. On June 23, the Supreme Court cleared the way for thousands of undocumented immigrants to be deported to any of at least a dozen countries abroad in total disregard for their constitutional right to due process.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the government, called this latest Supreme Court ruling a victory. “DHS can now execute its lawful authority and remove illegal aliens to a country willing to accept them,” she told the press. “Fire up the deportation planes.”
“It’s been 106 days since my husband was abducted by the Trump administration and separated from my family,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura told a press conference before the June 27 ruling. “We’ve had to stand and plead for his liberation. He has missed birthdays, graduations, and Father’s Day, and today our wedding anniversary. Today, in honor of Kilmar, I will celebrate our fight, and the fight of all those who stood with us and refuse to give up until he is free.”
Like thousands of other workers picked up in the Trump administration’s drive for far-reaching deportations, Abrego Garcia was denied his constitutional right to defend himself. His deportation directly violated a 2019 court order barring his removal to El Salvador, in what the administration called “an administrative error.”
The felony charges he now faces — over 100 charges of interstate human smuggling for financial gain between 2016 and 2025 — are built around a single 2022 traffic stop, in which Abrego Garcia was not arrested but issued a ticket for driving without a valid license.
While Abrego Garcia has no criminal arrests or convictions, his accuser, Jose Ramon Hernandez, who has been released from prison and given special absolution from deportation for his “testimony” in the Maryland workers’ prosecution, does. Hernandez was arrested in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and in 2022.
A number of workers who have been caught up in the administration’s dragnet and threatened with deportation are being supported by their unions. The U.S. government is trying to corner Abrego Garcia in the fight. The national AFL-CIO; Abrego Garcia’s union, SMART; and many others stand in solidarity with him.
Two workers held in the Tacoma Detention Center in Washington state have won release, including SEIU members Lewelyn Dixon from Washington and Cliona Ward from California. Others jailed there are fighting to regain their freedom, including Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a leader of the Washington farmworkers’ union Familias Unidas pro la Justicia, and forklift driver and Machinists union member Maximo Londonio.
The fight to prevent the government from pitting immigrant workers against native-born is crucial to the fight to unify the working class.