GREENBELT, Md. —The Smart-TD union, which stood up for its member, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, against the weight of GOP President Donald Trump’s hate for migrants and his ICE agents and officials’ malevolent attempts to deport him, is cheering: On December 11, the federal judge handling the case ordered ICE to let Abrego Garcia walk free.
Which he did, but under supervision and restrictions on his movements outside his home in Maryland’s D.C. suburbs.
“In August, Kilmar Abrego Garcia saw his family for the first time in months, after he was first illegally deported to El Salvador, and then held in custody after he returned to the United States,” Smart-TD General President Michael Coleman said in a statement after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s ruling.
“Days after he reunited with his wife and children, Kilmar followed the law and attended a mandatory check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” ICE, said Coleman. “He was immediately detained. He has not been with his family since.
“It is almost impossible to imagine what Kilmar, his wife, Jennifer, and his young children have experienced over these months.
“But today, after even more months of separation, Kilmar and his family have finally been given the chance to see each other again. We are thankful this family will finally be reunited.
“The fight for Kilmar has always been about due process. It is one of the pillars this great country was founded on. A pillar that actually DOES make America great. We fight for this due process every day for our members, and we will continue to fight for it and every right that our members deserve,” Coleman promised.
Even though Abrego Garcia can be with his wife and children, his legal saga isn’t over, according to the timeline and story of his ICE abduction and deportation that the judge laid out in her 31-page ruling.
“Since Abrego Garcia’s return from wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been re-detained, again without lawful authority,” Judge Xinis declared.
Abrego Garcia originally sought asylum from murderous gangs in his native El Salvador. It was denied once, and he seeks it again. Meanwhile, he faces trumped-up charges in federal court in Tennessee of human trafficking. Judge Xinis in Greenbelt, Md., calls that “vindictive and selective persecution.”
His attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, thinks Abrego Garcia is still in danger from ICE.
“I think they’re going to keep coming after him. The exact means in which they do that, we don’t know,” Moshenberg told CNN. He added Abrego Garcia “now has an open runway to apply for asylum in the United States, if that’s what he chooses to do.”
Abrego Garcia’s arrest as he was a peaceful passenger in a car in Tennessee is a cause celebre forSmart-TD in particular and the union movement in general. His fate has become a rallying point for everyone who hates the vicious and violent tactics ICE uses to arrest, detain, and deport people without hearings, trials, and any chances to plead their cases, all in furtherance of Trump’s goal to rid the U.S. of anyone and everyone who is brown-skinned.
For Abrego Garcia, that meant shipment to a notorious prison in El Salvador, where he was brutally beaten and tortured, Judge Xinis recounted in retelling the saga in detail. When the U.S. Supreme Court finally ordered Trump and ICE to “facilitate” Garcia’s return, they did so reluctantly. ICE also tried to ship him off to four African countries. They didn’t want him.
And if he had to be expelled from the U.S., Abrego Garcia repeatedly told the court, he’d prefer peaceful and friendly Costa Rica, which in return was and is ready to welcome him with open arms and promises it wouldn’t transship him elsewhere. But ICE, Trump, and Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, refused to listen or budge.
But the best solution for Abrego Garcia and his family was to set him free, here, and that’s what Judge Xinis did. It’s also fine with Judge Xinis and with Garcia, if he leaves voluntarily for Costa Rica.
“Costa Rica never wavered in its commitment to receive Abrego Garcia, just as Abrego Garcia never wavered in his commitment to resettle there,” the judge wrote.
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