Above photo: Left photo courtesy the author, right photo from Tutela Legal María Julia Hernández.
On Friday, April 4, a Federal District Judge ordered that Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran man who was erroneously and illegally sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, be returned home by midnight on Monday, April 7, 2025. During a hearing in the lawsuit filed to demand his return, the judge discussed with the Justice Department attorney many ways in which Abrego García’s arrest and deportation were unlawful. She also reached the resounding conclusion that the US government still has effective custody over him and can restore him “to status quo”—meaning living with his family and working legally in Maryland.
As a teenager in El Salvador, Kilmar was targeted by a violent gang that was trying to recruit him and extort money from his mother’s pupusa stand. The many threats on his life forced the family to move multiple times, and in 2011 Kilmar crossed the US border. In 2019 he was detained with other job seekers at a Home Depot and then placed in ICE custody. Eventually he had a full hearing after which a judge prohibited the U.S. government from sending him back to El Salvador, a humanitarian protection called “withholding of removal.” Now a work permit holder, he is a union member and sheet metal apprentice, and has a family in Maryland. Though Trump administration officials accuse him of being an MS-13 gang member, Federal Judge Paula Xinis today said, “That is just chatter in my view. I haven’t been given any such evidence.”
Over the past week government officials have argued that it was “an administrative error” to send Mr. Abrego García to El Salvador, but that he is now under the jurisdiction of another country and they cannot bring him back. The Justice Department attorney repeated that argument today, while acknowledging that the deportation was illegal. But Judge Xinis stated that Mr. Abrego García effectively remains in US custody, since Secretaries Noem and Rubio have publicly described an agreement under which the US government is paying El Salvador $6 million to house deportees for one year. She noted that there are no criminal charges against him in El Salvador, which shows that he is being held at the US government’s request, for a limited time. Also, if he were such a dangerous criminal, there would be extradition orders so he could be prosecuted in both the US and El Salvador, yet no such proceedings have been filed. The judge also noted that some individuals who were sent to El Salvador have been returned, so return of Mr. Abrego García is possible, which also indicates the US has functional control of the detainee and can unwind its “wrong decision.”
Because of the 2019 “withholding of removal” order, which US officials were aware of, and because there was no Title VIII order for his removal, Judge Xinis said that “from the moment he was seized, it was unconstitutional.” She said that his deportation “was an illegal act” that violated the Immigration and Nationality Act and that the government had denied his right to due process.
We should take note of all this government lawbreaking in the Kilmar Abrego García case, because it is not uncommon. The Trump administration is using ICE to instill fear with warrantless raids and illegal deportations. They are starting with the most vulnerable—immigrants and student protesters—but the idea is to intimidate us all and crush dissent by any of us. But if we organize, resist, and challenge their illegal tactics, we can win.
We should also remember that the problem of violent gangs in El Salvador is a product of US intervention. During the 1980s, the US government propped up El Salvador’s violent government and prolonged its civil war, resulting in more than 75,000 deaths and the need for large numbers of young Salvadoran males to flee to the US to avoid forced conscription. Many of these young men, incarcerated for immigration violations and petty crimes, were introduced to violent gangs before they were massively deported to El Salvador under the Clinton administration. The result for the Central American country was a large criminal population trained in violence by a brutal war (including US support for death squads), and by gangs in US prisons.
Unfortunately, President Bukele of El Salvador has now made the problem much worse. He has been using the gang problem as an excuse for a State of Exception that has been in place for three years, under which he has incarcerated over 80,000 people—many without charges or trials, and many of them environmental and human rights defenders. El Salvador now has the world’s largest incarceration rate. The inhumane conditions we see in reporting on recent mass deportations are widespread. Kilmar Abrego García has not been able to communicate with his family since he arrived at the notorious CECOT prison, but this is true of tens of thousands of Salvadoran prisoners around the country. Trump and Musk admire the Bukele model. We must learn from the situation of our Salvadoran brothers and sisters and resist. We must raise our voices for the rights of Salvadorans caught in mass incarceration, and for ourselves.
Hundreds of people came to today’s hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland. Two courtrooms were full of supporters for Kilmar and his family, and a couple of hundred remained outside. And in El Salvador, thousands of people—the families of innocent victims of Bukele’s unconstitutional war on gangs—have also been mobilizing to demand their freedom, often under the threat of arbitrary arrests for them as well. As today’s chanting crowd in Maryland said, “If we fight, we win!” We will need this unity and resistance to make sure that Kilmar Abrego García comes home, to stop mass deportations, and to end mass incarceration in the US and El Salvador.