Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man Trump wants sent to Uganda

• For years, besieged Kilmar Abrego Garcia worked as a construction worker in U.S. state of Maryland, where he lived with his wife and children.
• The Salvadorian national was, however, arrested in March and wrongly deported to a jail in his homeland: El Salvador.
• The Trump administration says Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, an accusation that he denies even as the push to dump him in Uganda intensifies.

From the streets of Kampala to the corridors of power in U.S. Donald Trump’s administration, one name, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, keeps popping up in the evolving illegal immigrants’ deportation global debate.

According to various media reports, detainee Kilmar Abrego Garcia continues to attract attention as the 30-year-old construction worker and Salvadorian national puts up a spirited fight to avoid a potential 20-hour flight from the U.S. to Kampala, Uganda, in the heart of Africa.

Before he surrendered to the police recently, Kilmar Abrego Garcia stated: “This administration has hit us hard, but I want to tell you guys something: God is with us, and God will never leave us,” adding, “God will bring justice to all the injustice we are suffering.”

Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia?

For many years, the Salvadorian national worked as a construction worker in U.S. state of Maryland, where he lived with his wife and children. But as the Trump administration ramped up arrests and deportation of illegal immigrants in March, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested and wrongly deported to a jail in his homeland: El Salvador.

According to immigration officials in the Trump administration, Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, an accusation that he continues to deny to-date.

His legal team maintains that his deportation to El Salvador went contra to a court ruling in 2019 that shielded him from deportation to his native country since he had demonstrated “well-founded fear” to his life coming from a gang there.

As calls faulting the Trump administration swelled, his wife filed a case in court demanding that authorities bring him back. In June, the administration caved in, and brought him back in the face of a U.S. Supreme Court order.

Upon landing, however, Garcia was charged in a Tennessee court for human smuggling, a charge that he pleaded not guilty. Even as this smuggling case, which stems from a 2022 traffic offense where he was caught with nine passengers in a car suspected to be a smuggling job gets underway, immigration officials are determined to deport him, noting that he’s a risk to the community as well as a member of MS-13 gang.

So, which way for Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Uganda or Costa Rica?

According to federal officials, Kilmar Abrego Garcia ought to be deported because he came into the U.S. illegally. In their argument, the 2019 ruling by an immigration judge deemed that the Salvadorian is eligible for expulsion from the U.S. only that he should not be taken back to his native El Salvador.

In recent days, the Trump administration argues that Garcia can be taken to Uganda, one of three African countries where Washington has inked an agreement to deport illegal immigrants. Last week, Uganda insisted that although it is in talks with the U.S. on such a plan, it doesn’t envision welcoming people who are not of African descent or criminals. Also, Uganda said it will not be accepting unaccompanied minors from the U.S. Rwanda and South Sudan have also agreed to welcome deportees from the U.S.

Currently, Garcia’s lawyers have faulted the agreement between Uganda and the U.S., arguing that the country is grappling with myriad cases of violation of human rights. What’s more, the lawyers noted they have not been briefed when Garcia will have ‘a reasonable fear interview,’ where he is expected to cite fears of torture in the hands of authorities in Uganda.

“We don’t know whether Uganda will even let him walk around freely in Kampala or whether he’ll be inside of a Ugandan jail cell, much less whether they are going to let him stay,” Garcia’s lawyer Sandoval-Moshenberg told the press.

According to his attorney, if U.S. immigration officials establish that the Salvadorian has not cause for fear of being deported to Uganda, Sandoval-Moshenberg should petition a U.S. immigration judge to review that decision. And in the event the immigration judge assesses the case and upholds the determination, Garcia has the right to take his contest to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

“This is all so very new and unprecedented. We will see what the government’s position on that is,” added Sandoval-Moshenberg.

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Costa Rica acceptable destination country

Recently, media reports note that Garcia told ICE officials that Costa Rica was an acceptable destination country in case of deportation because is seized of “assurances from Costa Rica that they would give him refugee status, that he would be at liberty in that country, and that he will not be re-deported onto El Salvador,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

“Costa Rica is not justice,” his lawyer noted, adding: “It is an acceptably less-bad option.”

Garcia’s communication to ICE officials about his preference for Costa Rica was different from another one done by federal prosecutors in Tennessee to deport the construction worker to the Central American nation as part of a broad plan of pleading guilty to charges of human smuggling. Garcia turned down this arrangement.

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