(NewsNation) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia told a crowd of supporters “love will trump” minutes before he was due to report to Immigration, Customs and Enforcement officials in Baltimore on Monday.
“In my ICE check-in, promise me this: Promise me that you will continue to pray, continue to fight, resist and love — not just for me but for everybody, continue to demand freedom,” Abrego Garcia told the crowd.
Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a high-security prison in El Salvador in March, rejected the Trump administration’s offer to be sent to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges, his attorneys said.
Skipping that deal could instead have Abrego Garcia deported to Uganda “no earlier than 72 hours from now (absent weekends),” according to his lawyers.
That means he could be on a plane to Entebbe as soon as Wednesday.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney Sean Hacker filed a court document over the weekend accusing the Trump administration of coercion, claiming his client is being forced “to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat.”
On Friday, a U.S. federal judge ordered Abrego Garcia’s release from a Tennessee jail, where he had been held since being returned to the U.S. in June, following his mistaken deportation to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison in March.
After initially accusing him of being a gang member, the Trump administration called Abrego Garcia’s deportation an “administrative error” in April. Top officials have since walked back those comments.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a statement Friday in part saying: “Today, we reached a new low with this publicity hungry Maryland judge mandating this illegal alien who is a MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator be allowed free.”
The courts have found there is insufficient evidence to tie Abrego Garcia to the gang and have determined he is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk.
In 2019, a U.S. immigration judge had barred Abrego Garcia from being deported back to his native El Salvador because he likely faced persecution there by local gangs who had terrorized him and his family.
NewsNation’s Jordan Perkins, Steph Whiteside and Anna Kutz contributed to this report.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Marcus Espinoza
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://www.newsnationnow.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.