WASHINGTON — Supporters of Kilmar Abrego García will rally in his defense Nov. 20 outside a U.S. District Court hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, protesting the Donald Trump administration’s latest move to immediately deport him to Liberia. CASA, an area immigrant rights group, called the rally, “Freedom for Kilmar.” It demands his release “to bring him home where he belongs — with his family.”
Along with his family, friends, CASA and other supporters of immigrant rights, his union, the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, has backed his fight for due process and release from prison.
If he is unable to prevail in his fight to stay in the U.S. with his wife and children, Abrego García says he is willing to go to Costa Rica, which says it is ready to accept him as a refugee. He would continue his fight to return and remain in the U.S. from there. The government refuses to consider this. Instead, in a transparent effort to punish him, the Justice Department insists on deporting him to Africa.
In a gross violation of the constitutional right to due process, the 30-year-old sheet metal apprentice from Beltsville, Maryland, was seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and deported to El Salvador March 15, despite a court order barring the government from sending him there. He and his mother had fled to the U.S. after they were threatened by gangs in El Salvador. Without a hearing, he was flown to the notorious CECOT prison where he was tortured.
Courts, from Maryland to the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered the Justice Department to bring him home. Finally, under pressure of public protests, he was returned in June, but immediately arrested on frame-up charges in a Tennessee court of being a gang member involved in “human smuggling.” He insists these charges are false.
The government says they’ll drop the charges if Abrego García submits to going to Africa.
In August Judge Waverly Crenshaw, who is presiding over the Tennessee case, said the government’s case was a “poor attempt to tie Abrego to MS-13,” the Salvadoran gang ICE claims he was tied up with.
Waverly, as well as Judge Paula Xinis who is hearing Abrego García’s immigration case in Maryland, have sharply criticized government officials for their prejudicial public attacks on Abrego García. They both say they are considering sanctions against the officials over what looks like a case of vindictive prosecution.
On Nov. 13 the Justice Department filed 10 pages of additional material against Abrego García in the Tennessee case and the “human smuggling” charges. New witnesses were furnished who claim Abrego García is a member of the MS-13 gang, along with a new claim he sent pornographic texts to a minor.
The Nov. 20 hearing in Maryland before Judge Xinis will deal with a government motion to remove the court order barring it from deporting Abrego García to Liberia. If it succeeds, the Liberian government says it will only accept him temporarily, leaving his future up in the air.
Join this fight! As his union explains, protecting all our rights means fighting for Kilmar Abrego García.