Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadorian migrant whose months-long court fight has emerged as a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, will report Monday to the ICE Field Office in Baltimore, where he is expected to be arrested and deported to Uganda, his attorneys told Fox News Digital.
The news caps an extraordinary, six-month court battle over Abrego Garcia’s legal status that has spanned two continents, touched off dozens of lengthy court hearings, and involved three federal judges in Tennessee and Maryland.
The Department of Justice has said Abrego Garcia is a member of the El Salvadoran gang MS-13, was caught in Tennessee allegedly driving a van full of illegal migrants, and has been accused by his wife of beating her.
His supporters have painted him as a hard-working father who has been vilified by the Trump administration, and have pointed to a judge’s ruling that said the government failed to provide sufficient evidence that he is a member of MS-13.
Now, Abrego Garcia is slated for deportation to a third country, after an immigration judge ruled he could not be sent back to his homeland because he faced danger there.
The latest development in Abrego Garcia’s saga comes days after the Justice Department offered to send him to Costa Rica on Thursday, in exchange for a guilty plea to criminal charges of human smuggling, brought against him while he was still detained in Salvadorian custody earlier this year.
Abrego Garcia declined the offer.
His attorneys used the spurned offer to bolster their motion to dismiss the criminal case against him on the grounds of “vindictive” and selective prosecution by the Trump administration.
They said the plea deal offer shows that the Trump administration had embarked on a pressure campaign against their client, and one in which several government agencies— the Justice Department, ICE, and DHS— were “using their collective powers to force” their client to choose between the plea and Costa Rica, or not accepting the offer, and what they termed the “rendition to Uganda.”
“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,” his attorneys said in a court filing on Saturday.
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It was not until after he rejected that offer, they said, that the government “informed Mr. Abrego that he has until first thing Monday morning — precisely when he must report to ICE’s Baltimore Field Office — to accept a plea in exchange for deportation to Costa Rica, or else that offer will be off the table forever.”
The plans were detailed in several documents, including the official notice sent Friday to Abrego Garcia’s attorneys by ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Adviser (OPLA), and in the Saturday court filing from his attorneys.
Abrego Garcia entered the US illegally when he was a teenager, and lived in Maryland with his wife and children, prior to his removal to El Salvador in March.
His family sued, saying his deportation to El Salvador violated a 2019 court order blocking him from being sent back to his home country.
After months of legal wrangling, the Trump administration in May returned Abrego Garcia to the US, where he was slapped with charges of human smuggling; an investigation that originated from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee and which began in April.
Should ICE immediately arrest Abrego Garcia, their actions would likely defy a court order handed down by US District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee, which sought to preclude ICE from immediately arresting Abrego Garcia upon return.
Fox News reported Friday that DHS and ICE officials, frustrated with Abrego Grcia’s release, had been consulting with the Justice Department and ICE’s lawyers about how to go about removing him from the US.
Lawyers for the Justice Department vehemently opposed Abrego Garcia’s release from custody, arguing at an evidentiary hearing earlier this year that he was a danger to the community and describing him as a member of MS-13 — a claim that was rejected by a judge in a ruling earlier this year.
Even so, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem blasted Abrego Garcia’s release from criminal custody on Friday, saying in a statement that the Trump administration “will not stop fighting till this Salvadoran man faces justice and is OUT of our country.”
Prior to Abrego Garcia’s arrival at the ICE facility in Baltimore Monday, CASA, an immigrant advocacy group, is holding an early-morning candlelight vigil outside the detention center in Baltimore to show their support for Abrego Garcia and his family.
“Kilmar is being made an example of, a martyr for having the courage to stand up to this administration’s illegal deportation practices,” Lydia Walther-Rodriguez, CASA’s Chief of Organizing and Leadership, said in a statement.
