DHS Arrests Kilmar Abrego Garcia With Plans To Ship Him To Uganda, Because He Refused To Plead Guilty To Fake Human Trafficking Charges
from the lose-lose-proposition dept
The man who never expected to be the public face of the Trump administration’s shotgun approach to deportation is, yet again, being given a set of untenable options and expected to pick one of them. And when he refused to accept the bad choice they gave him, they arrested him this morning at his mandated ICE check-in and announced they’re just going to send him to Uganda.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was originally swept up by ICE and sent to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison, despite have a clear court order that he could not be deported to El Salvador.
Garcia is from El Salvador. Although he’d clearly like to remain in the States with his family, if he had to be removed from the US, he’d prefer to be sent to nearby Costa Rica, which has promised to grant him status, rather than left to rot in a prison overseen by the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” (or an American prison on totally trumped up charges that don’t pass the laugh test).
Garcia has been yanked around by the Trump administration, which has vehemently refused to take even the smallest loss in the War on asylum seekers, even if doing so might have resulted in larger wins later. This yanking around extended to a federal court, where DOJ prosecutors and DHS legal advisors repeatedly tested the patience of multiple presiding judges.
After weeks of claiming it was impossible to retrieve Garcia from the Salvadoran hellhole the administration had sent him to, Garcia was suddenly returned to the United States. While that may have been good news, the rest of it wasn’t. The government still wanted to make Garcia pay for refusing to accept his unlawful punishment silently. It threw the book at him upon his return, claiming Garcia was nothing more than a human trafficker — something it based solely on a 2022 traffic stop where Garcia wasn’t even cited, much less arrested for any criminal activity whatsoever. Two separate courts found the entire claim by the US government preposterous and ordered him released from jail.
Abrego Garcia is getting hit with this administration’s version of the “trial tax.” He’s faced with two options, neither of which would be a satisfactory outcome for a man still proclaiming his innocence and has already been subjected to this government’s cruelty.
The federal government is trying to force Kilmar Abrego Garcia to accept a guilty plea or face deportation to Uganda, his attorneys claimed in a filing on Saturday.
The Salvadoran man, who was wrongly deported in March before being brought back to the United States to face human smuggling charges, was released from criminal custody in Tennessee and sent back to Maryland on Friday.
After Abrego Garcia declined an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to the human smuggling charges, his attorneys say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement informed them that he could be deported to Uganda and ordered him to report to their office in Baltimore on Monday.
This is just more pure cruelty from a president who’s made that his presidential brand. Costa Rica would be the obvious choice when the only other option is Uganda, one of the poorest nations in the world. But Costa Rica is only an option if Garcia pleads guilty to fake charges and serves time in prison. If he wants to remain a “free” man, he must subject himself to being involuntarily displaced yet again, unceremoniously deposited in one of the worst places this cruel and unusual administration can think to send him.
The DOJ, of course, refuses to address the allegations made by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers. Instead, its statement says nothing about the pressure it’s applying. Nor does it explain why the government has decided on Uganda as the final destination for Garcia should he refuse to give it the guilty plea it sorely needs to justify its heinous actions after the fact. And rather than actually dealing with this appropriately, they just decided to arrest him and announce the plan to send him to Uganda. It’s pretty clear that the choice of Uganda is about further punishing Garcia for existing and trying to exercise his own rights.
This came a few hours after Abrego Garcia filed a lawsuit to try to block ICE from doing this.
All of this is so blatantly obvious retaliation for making the Trump administration look bad. They wanted quiet acquiescence as they illegally human trafficked hundreds of people to a foreign gulag, and now they’re taking it out on one guy for daring to ask to have his basic rights respected. It’s a sad show from a pathetic Trump administration that is simply unable to handle anyone pointing out their mistakes.
Filed Under: abrego garcia, cecot, costa rica, dhs, doj, el salvador, ice, immigration, kilmar abrego garcia, mass deportation, trump administration, uganda
Comments on “DHS Arrests Kilmar Abrego Garcia With Plans To Ship Him To Uganda, Because He Refused To Plead Guilty To Fake Human Trafficking Charges”
I’m reminded of:
KJV “¶Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. 15. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. 16. For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall.”
Plead guilty, because even as co-opted as the courts are, we can’t get a guilty verdict with no evidence. Also, sadism.
Trump & co. should be airdropped into Yemen.
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Is airdropping them into the Sun an option? Because that would be preferable.
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Yemenis shouldn’t have to deal with them.
It’s harder and harder that find a country where laws are basically non-existent, not at war, and that doesn’t hate the US… but soon the only country remaining will be the US.
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How do you figure the US to be a country that doesn’t hate the US? They did elect Trump, didn’t they?
Uganda is the natural choice (for Trump). It’s been run by the same dictator for the last forty years who is super willing to succ for Trump and revels in running a corrupt bigoted shitshow where the primary function of the state seems to be wanton cruelty.
At least it tells the rest of the world the USA is a place where the rule of law is held in contempt
Every lawyer involved in any potential extraditions to the USA in the world must be adding everything this administration barfs out on this case to demonstrate why the USA can’t be trusted to uphold basic standards of legality
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Not So Innocent
This is not true. Garcia crossed the border illegally, had his hearing, and now has a deportation order. The government isn’t going to reward bad behavior, especially when leniency encourages even more illegal immigration and exacerbates the problem.
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You’re statistically more likely to have broken more laws than he has. He hasn’t been tried or found guilty of any violations of laws and he’s specifically been given a status of protection from deportation that the government illegally, against the law, in violation of laws, not innocently, violated, by its own admission, and sent him to a human rights violating foreign prison.
Recognize that you are defending the actions of the entity that is breaking the law and violating court orders and, far worse, committing intentional acts of genocide.
Recognize that you only worry about the law being broken when its a person with darker skin than you, but you voted for a convicted felon.
Yes, your hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug. We all see that. Dance your fascist apologetics dance.
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It is true, Koward. Fuck off with your lies.
Garcia may have entered the US illegally, but he was living there legally with a court’s permission, and he had regular check-ins with ICE.
He was deported without due process based on lies, incarcerated in a concentration camp and only brought back because of public pressure, after which the government that deported him in the first place didn’t even apologise, or acknowledge to him how badly they fucked up.
And now he’s about to be deported again because of lies.
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Koby. I did someone bash your brain in?
Literally none of what you said is true.
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Yes, it absolutely is true. You are lying. I know, I know, in the age of Trump anything MAGA says must be presumed true, but you know that you’re lying Koby. And everyone here knows that you are lying.
No, you are misrepresenting what happened yet again. He crossed the border and sought asylum, which is a legal way to enter the country. He was eventually denied asylum, but did have protection against removal to El Salvador, which the Trump administration ignored and violated. They then LIED and made up criminal charges as an excuse to bring him back (pretending they weren’t doing it because the Supreme Court ordered them to help bring him back) and now are pressuring him to accept a faux guilty plea by threatening to remove him half way around the world.
I know you HAVE to lie because the truth is so horrifying and inhuman, but Koby, no one’s buying your bullshit.
Koby, this government ALWAYS rewards bad behavior so long as it’s in support of Donald Trump, who has 34 felony convictions, yet faced no consequences from it. This is the same President who pardoned over a thousand convicted criminals, including those who beat police officers.
So don’t fucking tell me they aren’t going to reward behavior. Everyone knows that Trump and his pathetic minions will always reward bad behavior so long as it’s in support of the MAGA myth.
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Shut the fuck up, Koby. Illegal immigration is a misdemeanor civil issue, dickhead. No amount of shilling for fascists is ever going to make walking across an imaginary line worse than unceremoniously dumping people in random shitholes like Uganda.
Most undocumented folks are better people and harder workers than your useless ass will ever be.
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This is not true. Garcia crossed the border illegally, had his hearing, and was granted withholding of removal status, which lasted until Trump’s section of the Proud Boys illegally sent him back to the country the original judge said he wasn’t to be returned to despite no deportation order being in place. They then brought him back to face Trumped up charges mere days after claiming to be unable to get him out of CECOT weeks after he had already been sent from the torture center to another El Salvadorian prison. FI, your feelings don’t Trump the facts regardless of your beliefs otherwise.
DHS KIDNAPS
Saying they arrested him gives the false impression that they are upholding the law.
It’s a sad show from a pathetic Trump administration that is simply unable to handle anyone pointing out their mistakes.
It’s not a mistake if it’s deliberate, and all this cruelty is very much intentional.
This action not only highlights how pathetic the regime is but it should also serve as a massive wake-up call for any judges still deluded enough as to think that the regime is operating in good faith in either their claims or cases in court, and an ironclad justification to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt and bring the hammer down when they engage in such blatant abuse.
The governor of Texas has confessed
to more than 100,000 of human trafficking, PROUDLY.
See his website touting his crimes
https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/texas-transports-over-100000-migrants-to-sanctuary-cities
I’m not sure they’re trying to take it out on him so much as they’re trying desperately to keep his case from ever being able to go to trial. When it does there’s going to be a ruling on the merits that even the 5th Circuit and the Roberts Court are going to have difficulty disputing in writing, and they’ll have to do it in writing instead of via the shadow docket. At that point a whole lot of chickens come home to roost for the DOJ and ICE.
Now if the judge(s) are just willing to go “We’re ordering DOJ/ICE to make him available for court appearances before they had any opportunity to move him, so if he isn’t available we’re justified in throwing the responsible agents/officers in jail for contempt of court on the spot.”.
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“that even the 5th Circuit and the Roberts Court are going to have difficulty disputing in writing, and they’ll have to do it in writing instead of via the shadow docket.”
Considering the Roberts Supreme Court, I expect them to shadow-docket the decision nonetheless.
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cry me a river
Tim, you say fake trafficking charges. Any proof? So far, Kilmar admitted to TN troopers that his fellow illegal alien Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes was his employer in frequent and regular trafficking trips to the South: https://tennesseestar.com/news/abrego-garcia-drove-suv-owned-by-convicted-human-smuggler-documents-confirm/jtnews/2025/04/23/ Bonus: 12 MPG Suburban Chevy is on google street view 2 years apart at Kilmar occupied single family house in MD. Along with construction vehicles and ladders.
We can presume the Feds have plenty of evidence from surveillance records on which you and your colleagues reported countless times as part of surveillance state coverage. 10 years worth of plates scans, Home Depot CCTV (live fed to Feds’ database), toll booths pics of driver, and so on.
Kilmar’s legal case is past due. He has final order of removal years old, and there is nothing that can be done. He as due process available to him at all times: he has to apply for entry at proper US consulate. And wait as everybody else.
There is also nothing that prevents Kilmar self deporting to country of his own choice, if dislikes Costa Rica and Uganda.
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I think two separate federal judges saying that the evidence is laughable. One pointed out “it defies common sense.”
So… yeah…
Re: Re: not conclusive
Was Kilmar (driver) caught with 9 fellow illegal aliens in TN in 2022? Was this Suburban owned by a convicted trafficker Reyes? Did Kilmar admit to TN troopers that trafficker Reyes was his employer at the time? Who envelope with $1400 cash belonged to? Is this the same Suburban on two separate street view pics parked in driveway of a house claimed as residence by Kilmar and those 9 illegals? (2 times 2 years apart.) Laughable so far are delusional activists judges. I look forward for his January trial to see how laughable Feds evidence is.
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Just the fact that you refer to people as “illegal aliens” tells me that you’re not a serious person and that you are filled with hate and bigotry.
He was stopped during a traffic stop with others in a van. There was no review regarding the documentation of those in the vehicle, other than asking them to write down their birthdates.
And why does it not surprise me that someone like you doesn’t know the elements of human trafficking?
Are you going to tell me he has MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles too?
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If driving others to work now counts as human trafficking, I should stop car-pooling even though it helps me pay for gas.