Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man illegally deported to El Salvador in March and returned in June to face human smuggling charges that he denies, is accusing the Trump administration of attempting to coerce him into a guilty plea by threatening to re-deport him to Uganda.
Attorneys for Abrego said in a Saturday court filing the Justice Department is pressuring him to accept a guilty plea to two felony counts, promising to deport him to Costa Rica — where he would be free from incarceration — after the completion of any criminal sentence.
“In conjunction with that proposal, the government produced a letter to Mr. Abrego’s counsel confirming that he could live freely in that country, which would accept him as a refugee or grant him residency status, and promise not to refoul him to El Salvador,” Abrego’s lawyers indicated in court papers.
But after Abrego resisted that proposal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told his lawyers that they had decided instead to deport him to Uganda. Government officials informed Abrego’s lawyers that the Costa Rica option would remain on the table if he pleads guilty by Monday, his attorneys wrote.
“There can be only one interpretation of these events: the DOJ, DHS, and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Abrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat,” Abrego’s attorney Sean Hecker wrote in the filing.
The allegation by Abrego’s lawyers comes a day after Abrego was released from a Tennessee jail, where he had been held since returning to the U.S. in June. He is being instructed to report to a Baltimore Immigrations and Customs Enforcement field office by “first thing” Monday morning, according to the filing.
The Ugandan government announced earlier this week that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to accept third-country deportees from the U.S. The African nation’s foreign minister said the country will not accept “individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors” and preferred individuals from African countries.
Abrego is asking a federal judge in Tennessee to dismiss the criminal case against him, saying the smuggling charges are corrupted by an overtly vindictive drive by the Trump administration to punish him.
Abrego’s case made national headlines after he was illegally sent to El Salvador in March on one of three planes that also included more than 100 Venezuelans targeted by President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. He was initially incarcerated in El Salvador’s notorious anti-terrorism prison, known as CECOT, before he was transferred to a different facility amid the international firestorm over his deportation.
Abrego, who entered the United States illegally more than 10 years ago and had resided primarily in Maryland with his wife and children, was protected from deportation to El Salvador, his home country, by an immigration judge’s order that found he could face violence and persecution from a local gang.
A judge instructed the Trump administration to bring Abrego back to the U.S., which the administration for months did not comply with. Once federal prosecutors were able to secure an indictment against him in Tennessee for human smuggling, they arranged his return.
Last month, Abrego described his experience at the Salvadoran prison, claiming he suffered “severe beatings,” sleep deprivation, malnutrition and other forms of torture at the hands of his jailers. Others released from that prison in a recent U.S.-brokered exchange between El Salvador and Venezuela have described similarly harrowing experiences.
Administration officials have accused Abrego of being an MS-13 gang member and foreign terrorist, a label Abrego vehemently denies and that federal judges have suggested is based on flimsy evidence.
Shortly after his release on Friday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem decried “activist liberal judges,” and said the administration “will not stop fighting till this Salvadoran man faces justice and is OUT of our country.”
“A federal grand jury has charged Abrego Garcia with serious federal crimes,” a Department of Justice spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO. “This defendant can plead guilty and accept responsibility or stand trial before a jury. Either way, we will hold Abrego Garcia accountable and protect the American people.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday’s filing.
“It is difficult to imagine a path the government could have taken that would have better emphasized its vindictiveness,” the lawyers wrote in the filing.
