Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, man US mistakenly deported to notorious El Salvador prison

Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s story begins in his native El Salvador, but it’s become increasingly unclear where it will end. The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S. from a notorious Salvadoran prison, rejecting the White House’s claim that it couldn’t retrieve Abrego Garcia after mistakenly deporting him.

Trump administration officials have pushed back against the idea of bringing him back, arguing it was up to El Salvador. The president of El Salvador said he lacked the power to return him, saying it would be “preposterous” to “smuggle a terrorist into the United States.”

Abrego Garcia, 29, lived in the U.S. for roughly 14 years, during which he worked construction, got married and was raising three children with disabilities, according to court records.

Trump administration officials said he was deported last month based on a 2019 accusation from local police in Maryland that he was an MS-13 gang member. Abrego Garcia denied the allegation and never was charged with a crime, his attorneys said.

Later in 2019, a U.S. immigration judge shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he likely faced persecution there by local gangs that had terrorized his family. The Trump administration deported him there anyway, later describing the mistake as “an administrative error” but insisting he was in MS-13.

As his case continues in the U.S. courts, here is Abrego Garcia’s story so far:

Gang threats in El Salvador
Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital city, San Salvador, according to court documents filed in U.S. immigration court in 2019. His father was a former police officer. His mother, Cecilia, sold pupusas, the nation’s signature dish of flat tortilla pouches that hold steaming blends of cheese, beans or savory pork.

The entire family, including his parents, two sisters and older brother, ran the business from home, court records state. Abrego Garcia’s job was to buy ingredients from the grocery store and make deliveries with his brother.

“Everyone in the town knew to get their pupusas from ‘Pupuseria Cecilia,’” his lawyers wrote.

A local gang, Barrio 18, began extorting the family for “rent money” and threatened to kill his older brother Cesar — or force him into their gang — if they weren’t paid, court documents state. The family complied but eventually sent Cesar to the U.S.

Barrio 18 similarly targeted Abrego Garcia, according to his immigration case. When he was 12, the gang threatened to take him away until his father paid them “all of the money that they wanted.” They still watched him as he walked to and from school.

The family moved 10 minutes away, but the gang threatened to rape and kill Abrego Garcia’s sisters, court records state. The family shut down the business, moved again and eventually sent Abrego Garcia to the U.S.

The family never went to authorities because of rampant police corruption, according to court filings. The gang continued to harass the family after they moved to Guatemala, which borders El Salvador.

Life in the U.S.
Abrego Garcia fled to the U.S. illegally around 2011, the year he turned 16, according to documents filed in his immigration case. He joined Cesar, now a U.S. citizen, in Maryland and found work in construction.

About five years later, Abrego Garcia met Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, the records say. In 2018, after she learned she was pregnant, he moved in with her and her two children. They lived in Prince George’s County, just outside Washington.

In 2019, Abrego Garcia went to a Home Depot looking for work when he was arrested by county police, according to court filings. Detectives asked if he was a gang member. After explaining he wasn’t, he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Abrego Garcia later told an immigration judge that he would seek asylum and asked to be released. Vasquez Sura was five months into a high-risk pregnancy.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, however, alleged that he was a certified gang member based on information that came from a confidential informant used by county police, records state.

According to Abrego Garcia’s attorneys in his current case, the criminal informant had alleged that Abrego Garcia belonged to an MS-13 chapter in New York, where he has never lived.

The information was enough for an immigration judge in 2019 to keep Abrego Garcia in jail as his immigration case continued, court records state. The judge said the informant was proven and reliable and had verified his gang membership and rank.

Abrego Garcia later married Vasquez Sura in a Maryland detention center, according to court filings. She gave birth while he was still in jail.

In October 2019, an immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador because of a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution, according to his case. He was released, and ICE did not appeal.

Abrego Garcia checked in with ICE yearly while the Department of Homeland Security issued him a work permit, his attorneys said in court filings. He joined a union and was employed full time as a sheet metal apprentice.

In 2021, Vasquez Sura filed a temporary protection order against Abrego Garcia, stating that he had punched, scratched and ripped off her shirt during an argument. The case, details of which were released by Trump administration officials, was dismissed several weeks later, according to court records.

Vasquez Sura said in a statement after the document’s release that the couple had worked things out “privately as a family, including by going to counseling.”

“After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order in case things escalated,” she stated. “Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process.”

She said the order does not justify his deportation.

“Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father, and I will continue to stand by him and demand justice for him,” she said.

He and Vasquez Sura were raising three kids, including their 5-year-old son, who has autism, is deaf in one ear and unable to verbally communicate, according to the complaint filed against the Trump administration. They’re also raising a 9-year-old with autism and a 10-year-old with epilepsy.

Mistaken deportation
In February, the Trump administration designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization and sought to remove identified members “as expeditiously as possible,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in Monday’s brief to the Supreme Court.

Abrego Garcia was pulled over March 12 outside an Ikea in Baltimore with his son, according to court records. An agent called Vasquez Sura and said she had 10 minutes to retrieve their son or ICE would request child protective services.

Abrego Garcia called his wife from jail and said authorities pressed him about MS-13, according to court documents. They asked about a photo they had of him playing basketball on a public court, and his family’s visits to a restaurant serving Mexican and Salvadoran food.

"He would repeat the truth again and again — that he was not in a gang,” Vasquez Sura stated in court documents.

(This story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from AP/PTI)