Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man whose mistaken deportation in March became a flashpoint in tensions over the Trump Administration’s hardline immigration policy, was “threatened and tortured” in a notorious El Salvadoran prison, his lawyers said in a court document that was filed on Wednesday.
Abrego Garcia was removed from the U.S. on March 15 as part of a mass deportation order by the Trump Administration, despite a 2019 federal court order that protected him from being deported to El Salvador. The Administration opposed multiple court orders to take steps to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, despite initially calling his deportation an “administrative error,” prompting legal scholars to sound alarms over the possibility of a constitutional crisis. Administration officials have accused Abrego Garcia of being affiliated with the MS-13 gang, without providing any proof. Abrego Garcia and his family have denied the allegations, saying that he fled El Salvador because of gang violence.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Last month, it was revealed that Abrego Garcia had been returned to the U.S., but that the Trump Administration was bringing criminal charges against him related to the transportation of undocumented immigrants—a move Abrego Garcia’s lawyers called “preposterous” and “an abuse of power, not justice.”
Read more: The Legal and Political Battle Over Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Deportation
The document filed on Wednesday details Abrego Garcia’s experiences in El Salvador’s notorious prison, Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), before he was later transferred to a different detention center in the country. His lawyers allege that when Abrego Garcia arrived at CECOT, a prison official told him and other people detained there, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.” Abrego Garcia was “then forced to strip, issued prison clothing, and subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster,” according to the court filing. The next day, it says, Abrego Garcia had “visible bruises and lumps all over his body.”
Abrego Garcia and 20 other people being held at CECOT “were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion,” according to the document. In that time, Abrego Garcia was denied access to a bathroom and soiled himself, the filing says.
On more than one occasion, Abrego Garcia saw people detained in other cells who he believed were gang members “violently harm each other with no intervention from guards or personnel” and could hear screaming from nearby cells throughout the night, according to the document.
“While at CECOT, prison officials repeatedly told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that they would transfer him to the cells containing gang members who, they assured him, would ‘tear’ him apart,” the filing alleges.
Abrego Garcia “suffered a significant deterioration in his physical condition,” according to the document, losing about 31 pounds in just the first two weeks he was being held at the prison.
A U.S. federal judge has ruled that Abrego Garcia could be released from U.S. custody while awaiting trial for the criminal charges that the Trump Administration had filed against him. But his attorneys expressed concern that the Administration would try to deport him again if he were to be released, and the judge granted their request to keep him in jail.
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