WASHINGTON — The Donald Trump administration’s Department of Justice filed a new motion before Judge Paula Xinis in U.S. District Court in Maryland Nov. 7 seeking to have Kilmar Abrego García deported to Liberia, thousands of miles from his wife and children, friends and fellow SMART union co-workers.
Xinis has so far barred his deportation. The 30-year-old sheet metal apprentice had already been deported in March to El Salvador, in the face of a long-standing court order barring his being sent there. He was thrown into the notorious supermax CECOT prison and was tortured. The Justice Department later admitted that move was a “mistake.”
Under the pressure of public protests, including by the SMART union, the Justice Department finally complied with a Supreme Court ruling that he be returned to the U.S. But then he was arrested on frame-up charges of “human smuggling.” Abrego García insists these charges are false.
Now the government is trying to pretend that case doesn’t exist in order to deport him to Africa.
Government officials, including Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, have been criticized by both Judge Xinis, and Judge Waverly Crenshaw, who is presiding over the human smuggling frame-up case, for publicly attacking Abrego García and prejudicing his defense. Both judges are considering sanctions against the government for vindictive prosecution.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego García’s lawyers, told the court that the government of Costa Rica is ready to accept Abrego García as a refugee, which the young worker would accept. The government refuses to consider this because they want to punish him.
The SMART union steps up
The stakes in this fight, a national flashpoint, are well presented by his union, in a Nov. 5 statement, “Protecting our rights: Kilmar Abrego and the fight for due process.” It’s printed in the fall issue of SMART’s magazine.
SMART has defended him since his March 12 arrest. General President Michael Coleman and Abrego García’s local, Local 100, helped organize the first press conference where he stood with Abrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vásquez Sura, and rallied the labor movement to defend him.
SMART locals around the country have marched with union banners to “Bring home brother Abrego García.” In Detroit, they led the May Day parade.
According to the article, “The case of Kilmar Abrego García is not just about one man. It is about all of us — and the rights we all stand to lose when one person is deprived of theirs.”
SMART lawyer Luke Rebecchi says in the article, “Millions of people in this country, many of our members, are not citizens but have every lawful right to be here and to work.”
On the right to due process he adds, “The Constitution mentions ‘citizens’ in many places, but it specifically states ‘no person’ [in the Fifth Amendment]. The use of ‘person’ was intentional, and it protects all persons in the United States regardless of their citizenship status.”
“Union members know, better than most other people in the world, the power of solidarity,” the union pointed out. No deportation! Asylum for Abrego García!