Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man at the heart of a firestorm over US President Donald Trump’s migrant expulsions, arrived in Maryland as a teenager fleeing gangsters extorting his family.After working in the United States for 14 years and raising a family there, the 29-year-old now finds himself locked up in El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) — built to house the very gangsters that once threatened his life.According to documents presented to a US immigration judge in 2019, Abrego Garcia was born in El Salvador in 1995 to a policeman father and a mother who sold maize griddle cakes known as pupusas.As kids, Abrego Garcia, his brother and two sisters worked in the family shop named after his mother: Cecilia. At the time, the country was engulfed in a vicious war between the Barrio 18 and MS-13 gangs that made Central America’s northern region one of the most violent in the world. With threats of death, Barrio 18 members started extorting Abrego Garcia’s family for protection money. Fearing Abrego Garcia and his brother would be forcibly recruited by the gangs, their parents sent them to the United States, where much of their family lives. Abrego Garcia arrived without migration papers in Maryland in 2011, aged 16, and started working in construction.- ‘Excellent father’ -In 2018, Abrego Garcia started a relationship with American Jennifer Vasquez Sura, with whom he has a five-year-old son diagnosed with autism.Vasquez Sura has two other children from a previous relationship — one of whom also has autism and the other epilepsy.She has described Abrego Garcia as an “excellent father” to all three kids, telling the Maryland-based CASA migrant rights NGO “he has been the main provider of our household and the love of my life for over seven years.”On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a copy on X of a temporary protective order that Vasquez Sura had sought against her husband in 2021 after an alleged violent interaction.”This MS-13 gang member is not a sympathetic figure,” the department concluded.But Vasquez Sura came out immediately with a statement to say she had acted out of an abundance of caution informed by a previous abusive relationship, and had dropped the matter against her husband — opting for couples counseling instead.The incident, she said, “is not a justification” for the government “abducting him and deporting him.”In 2019, while looking for work at a Home Depot — a DIY retailer — Abrego Garcia was arrested along with several other men by an anti-gang police unit, beginning the saga of his alleged MS-13 affiliation.According to the police file, a confidential informant was queried about Abrego Garcia after his arrest and affirmed that he was a member of MS-13. The police also noted Abrego Garcia’s attire was often worn by Hispanic gang members.He was placed into deportation proceedings but an immigration judge later in 2019 barred him from being sent to El Salvador, concluding he would be in danger there.The order allowed him to receive a work permit.”He has never been convicted of any crime, gang-related or otherwise,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said.- ‘Political games’ -Then, on March 12 this year, Abrego Garcia’s life was turned upside down.He was arrested in front of his five-year-old son as they exited a store in Maryland. Three days later, he landed in El Salvador with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans deported just hours after Trump invoked a rarely used wartime authority.Trump officials have claimed he is an illegal migrant, a gang member and involved in human trafficking, without providing evidence besides the 2019 police report.A federal judge has ordered for Abrego Garcia to be returned, but the administration — despite admitting an “administrative error” in his deportation — contends he is now solely in Salvadoran custody.El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who met Trump in Washington on Monday, said he does not have the power to send the man back.”I will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive,” Vasquez Sura said ahead of a hearing over the case this week in Maryland.She urged the Trump and Bukele governments “to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar.”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man at the heart of a firestorm over US President Donald Trump’s migrant expulsions, arrived in Maryland as a teenager fleeing gangsters extorting his family.After working in the United States for 14 years and raising a family there, the 29-year-old now finds himself locked up in El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) — built to house the very gangsters that once threatened his life.According to documents presented to a US immigration judge in 2019, Abrego Garcia was born in El Salvador in 1995 to a policeman father and a mother who sold maize griddle cakes known as pupusas.As kids, Abrego Garcia, his brother and two sisters worked in the family shop named after his mother: Cecilia. At the time, the country was engulfed in a vicious war between the Barrio 18 and MS-13 gangs that made Central America’s northern region one of the most violent in the world. With threats of death, Barrio 18 members started extorting Abrego Garcia’s family for protection money. Fearing Abrego Garcia and his brother would be forcibly recruited by the gangs, their parents sent them to the United States, where much of their family lives. Abrego Garcia arrived without migration papers in Maryland in 2011, aged 16, and started working in construction.- ‘Excellent father’ -In 2018, Abrego Garcia started a relationship with American Jennifer Vasquez Sura, with whom he has a five-year-old son diagnosed with autism.Vasquez Sura has two other children from a previous relationship — one of whom also has autism and the other epilepsy.She has described Abrego Garcia as an “excellent father” to all three kids, telling the Maryland-based CASA migrant rights NGO “he has been the main provider of our household and the love of my life for over seven years.”On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a copy on X of a temporary protective order that Vasquez Sura had sought against her husband in 2021 after an alleged violent interaction.”This MS-13 gang member is not a sympathetic figure,” the department concluded.But Vasquez Sura came out immediately with a statement to say she had acted out of an abundance of caution informed by a previous abusive relationship, and had dropped the matter against her husband — opting for couples counseling instead.The incident, she said, “is not a justification” for the government “abducting him and deporting him.”In 2019, while looking for work at a Home Depot — a DIY retailer — Abrego Garcia was arrested along with several other men by an anti-gang police unit, beginning the saga of his alleged MS-13 affiliation.According to the police file, a confidential informant was queried about Abrego Garcia after his arrest and affirmed that he was a member of MS-13. The police also noted Abrego Garcia’s attire was often worn by Hispanic gang members.He was placed into deportation proceedings but an immigration judge later in 2019 barred him from being sent to El Salvador, concluding he would be in danger there.The order allowed him to receive a work permit.”He has never been convicted of any crime, gang-related or otherwise,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said.- ‘Political games’ -Then, on March 12 this year, Abrego Garcia’s life was turned upside down.He was arrested in front of his five-year-old son as they exited a store in Maryland. Three days later, he landed in El Salvador with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans deported just hours after Trump invoked a rarely used wartime authority.Trump officials have claimed he is an illegal migrant, a gang member and involved in human trafficking, without providing evidence besides the 2019 police report.A federal judge has ordered for Abrego Garcia to be returned, but the administration — despite admitting an “administrative error” in his deportation — contends he is now solely in Salvadoran custody.El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who met Trump in Washington on Monday, said he does not have the power to send the man back.”I will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive,” Vasquez Sura said ahead of a hearing over the case this week in Maryland.She urged the Trump and Bukele governments “to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar.”
