Inside the Trump Administration’s Deportation of a Migrant to El Salvador

Immigration officers asked Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia if he was a gang member, and refused to believe him when he denied it, according to court papers.

The harrowing story of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia began six years ago on a March morning, when he dropped his pregnant girlfriend off at her job in suburban Maryland and made his way to a local Home Depot, hoping to find work as a casual day laborer.

It took an even darker turn last month when Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father and a Salvadoran migrant, was accused of belonging to a violent street gang. He was summarily deported to a Salvadoran prison — even though an American immigration judge had already decided he could remain in the United States, concerned he might be tortured in his homeland.

What happened in between those events is now the subject of a fierce legal battle between his lawyers and the Trump administration, which acknowledged this week that his deportation on March 15 was an “administrative error.”

Even after making the rare admission, the administration has effectively thrown its hands in the air, saying there is little it can do to retrieve Mr. Abrego Garcia from the brutal prison where it accidentally sent him.

For now at least, there appear to be more questions than answers in the case. That could change on Friday, when a federal judge in Maryland is set to consider an emergency request by Mr. Abrego Garcia’s legal team. His lawyers are asking for an order that will force the White House to use whatever means it has at its disposal — diplomacy, money, even a simple phone call — to bring their client back to the United States.

On Wednesday afternoon, the lawyers wrote to the judge, Paula Xinis, laying out the import of the case, not only for the man they represent, but for all migrants passing through the system.

“If defendants’ actions in this case are allowed to remain without redress, then orders of immigration courts are meaningless,” they wrote, “because the government can deport whomever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

Mr. Abrego Garcia, a metal worker, is the unlikely protagonist of what has become a national drama. He grew up in San Salvador, the Salvadoran capital, helping run his family’s business, Pupuseria Cecilia, which was named after his mother.

Even though his father was a former patrolman, court papers say, the business was often extorted by a local gang called Barrio 18, which eventually began a campaign of threats and violence against the family.

In 2011, his lawyers say, Mr. Abrego Garcia fled those threats and came to the United States illegally, moving to Maryland, where his older brother, a U.S. citizen, lived. Five years later, he met his future wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, also a citizen, and started a family with her on Ms. Sura’s salary as a dental worker and his own pay from the construction field.

Lawyers for Mr. Abrego Garcia did not respond to a request for comment.

On March 28, 2019, while Mr. Abrego Garcia was looking for work with three other migrants at a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Md., just outside Washington, he was taken into custody by officers from the Prince George’s County Police Department.

The officers asked if he was a gang member, and refused to believe him when he denied it, court papers say. That same day, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took custody of him as Ms. Sura sat alone at home, wondering where he was.

“I called various jails, but no one had information on his whereabouts,” she said in a sworn statement submitted last month to Judge Xinis. “The next morning, around 10 a.m., Kilmar called me from ICE custody.”

For the next six months, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case moved through an immigration court as the federal agents sought to deport him, claiming he belonged to a transnational street gang known as MS-13. Mr. Abrego Garcia not only denied he was a member of the gang, but also told the immigration judge about his family’s struggles with gangs in El Salvador, asking for a humanitarian exception to remain in the United States.

During the proceedings, the agents offered two pieces of evidence backing up their claims: an accusation from a confidential informant who said that Mr. Abrego Garcia belonged to MS-13, and the fact that when he was arrested he had been wearing Chicago Bulls merchandise, which the officials claimed was proof of his gang membership.

While he was never charged with, or convicted of, being in the gang, the evidence was enough for the judge hearing his case to keep him in custody while the matter was resolved.

There was still a bright spot for the family: In June 2019, the couple married in the deportation center where Mr. Abrego Garcia was being held.

“We were separated by glass and were not allowed physical contact,” Ms. Sura recalled in her statement. “The officer had to pass our rings to each other. It was heartbreaking not to be able to hug him.”

In October of that year, Mr. Abrego Garcia won his case, as the immigration judge granted him a special status known as “withholding from removal.” That allowed him to avoid being deported to El Salvador because he might face violence or torture there.

The next six years flew by with striking normalcy.

The couple had a third child, who was diagnosed with autism. Mr. Abrego Garcia kept his job as a metal worker and began taking classes at the University of Maryland, in nearby College Park. While he was required to check in with ICE once a year, there were no further arrests or allegations of gang membership.

“We really believed that the false accusations had been cleared up and that they were behind us,” Ms. Sura said.

Last month, everything changed.

On March 12, after finishing his shift as an apprentice at a new job site in Baltimore, Mr. Abrego Garcia picked up his youngest child, now 5, from his grandmother’s house. While driving home, court papers say, he was stopped by immigration agents who told him that he no longer enjoyed protected status in the country.

Minutes later, he was in handcuffs and placed inside an ICE vehicle. The agents called Ms. Sura, giving her 10 minutes to pick up their child, according to the papers. When she arrived, she was able to speak briefly with her husband before he was taken away.

“Kilmar was crying,” she recalled in her statement, “and I told him he would come back home because he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

That never happened.

Instead, court papers say, Mr. Abrego Garcia was moved around the country to various detention centers, where he again faced questions about alleged gang affiliations. One day after his arrest, according to the papers, he was allowed to call Ms. Sura, and confided to her that, while he was “very confused,” he had been assured that he would soon be brought in front of an immigration judge.

That never happened either.

Mr. Abrego Garcia’s arrest took place as the Trump administration was hastily arranging a series of charter flights to El Salvador intended to deport a group of Venezuelan migrants to the country under an entirely different legal framework. The Venezuelans, all of whom had been accused of belonging to a different gang called Tren de Aragua, were being deported under the expansive powers of an 18th-century wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act.

On the morning of March 15, Ms. Sura got a call from her husband, who informed her that he was being deported to El Salvador. That evening, he was placed on one of three flights that departed from a detention center in Raymondville, Texas, near the southern border, with instructions to deliver the passengers to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador called the Terrorism Confinement Center.

Ms. Sura has seen her husband only once since then — in a photo of the deportees that accompanied a newspaper article. The photo showed a group of men, their backs bent and their arms on their heads. None of their faces were visible.

Still, she recognized what seemed to be familiar tattoos on one of the men.

“I zoomed in to get a closer look at the tattoos,” she recalled in her sworn statement. “My heart sank. It was Kilmar.”

Our Coverage of U.S. Immigration

•  An Accidental Journey to a Salvadoran Prison: Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s story began six years ago, and took an even darker turn when he was recently deported — even though a judge had already decided he could remain in the United States, concerned he might be tortured in his homeland.
•  Detained Woman Dies: A Chinese woman detained by U.S. border officers for overstaying a visitor visa died by suicide while being held at a border patrol station in Arizona, a Democratic congresswoman said.
• Conservative Voices Raise Alarm: As the administration has rushed to carry out deportations as quickly as possible, the unified front in favor of President Trump’s immigration purge is beginning to crack.
• Nobel Laureate’s Visa Revoked: Óscar Arias Sánchez, twice president of Costa Rica, has been a vocal critic of Trump. Sánchez said that the United States had revoked his visa to enter the country, with no reason given.
• Costs of Building a Home: Take a line-by-line look at the estimated costs of building a four-bedroom home in Phoenix, Ariz., under Trump’s agenda.