Ábrego García: one man is at the centre of Trump’s immigration agenda

Donald Trump said that the US government has a “very easy case” against Kilmar Ábrego García, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March but returned on Friday to face charges of smuggling undocumented migrants into the US.

So what? The decision to mobilise the National Guard in Los Angeles has caused running battles with protesters there, reviving memories of the riots of 1992. But it is Ábrego García who has become the face of immigrant America in the age of Trump. A few months ago the Salvadoran lived in Maryland with his wife and three children. His case is now the most high-profile test yet of the president’s abilities to

• seize and deport immigrants using a little-used wartime law from 1798;
• defy the judiciary and bypass due process to do so at speed; and
• obtain indictments to retroactively justify this approach.

The man in question. Ábrego García, a 29-year-old construction worker from El Salvador, entered the US illegally in 2011. He was allowed to stay after a federal judge decided in 2019 that he would face persecution from violent drug gangs if he returned home.

Enter Trump. In March, Ábrego García was pulled over while driving home from a job in Baltimore. Within days he was on a plane with 200 others to El Salvador in Central America. He was held in a notorious mega-prison for gang members. Then:

• Officials admitted he was deported due to an “administrative error” but said without evidence that he was a member of the notorious MS-13 gang.
• A federal judge ordered the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” his return.
• The administration appealed the decision, but it was upheld.
• The Supreme Court affirmed it and told officials to bring about his return.

Stonewalling. The dispute brought the US to the brink of a constitutional crisis. A federal judge accused the administration of defying her authority by failing to provide information on efforts to return Ábrego García, and was weighing up whether to hold DoJ officials in contempt.

Mixed messages. Trump’s officials said they had no power to release him from El Salvador’s prison system and could only “facilitate” his return by letting him enter the US if he presented himself at the border. Trump later said he could bring Ábrego García back, but did not want to.

Manipulation. The US president also released a photo that he said showed Ábrego García had “MS13” tattooed on his knuckles, apparent evidence that he was a member of the gang. But the letters and numbers were superimposed on the image: they did not appear in other pictures of Ábrego García, including one released by El Salvador’s president.

Accused. The return of Ábrego García marks the latest chapter in what has become a defining legal battle for Trump as he tries to meet immigration targets in the face of repeated judicial setbacks. Friday’s indictment alleges that Ábrego García was part of a migrant smuggling ring, making 100 trips between Texas and Maryland from 2016 to 2025, and accuses him of transporting firearms and drugs. His lawyer called the charges “fantastical”.

The bigger picture. At the weekend, Trump ordered 2,000 National Guardsmen to deal with unrest in LA over immigration round-ups. The decision overrode the Californian governor, Gavin Newsom, who said the White House wanted “a spectacle”. It’s the first time a US president has directly ordered the deployment of a state’s national guard against the wishes of its governor since the Selma civil rights march in 1965.

Stepped up. If Trump also invokes the Insurrection Act to deal with the protests, the US will be in a much more dangerous place. For now the numbers speak for themselves. The 300,000 people who could be deported by the end of 2025 would only be a slight increase on 2024.

What’s more… If found guilty, Ábrego García faces up to 10 years in prison for every person he is accused of transporting into the US. This would keep him in jail for the rest of his life.

Photograph courtesy Ábrego García Family