As the court battle rages over the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man at center of one of the most consequential legal standoffs since Donald Trump returned to office sits in an El Salvador mega-prison, unable to speak for himself.
In the vacuum, his attorneys and wife have characterized Abrego Garcia — who the Trump administration claims is a member of the criminal gang MS-13 — as a responsible father and a caring family man whose life in America was abruptly shattered when he was arrested by ICE agents on March 12 and sent three days later to a notorious Salvadoran prison as part of the administration’s immigration crackdown.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration pushed back on that narrative, releasing documents they say show Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang ties, and other documents showing that Abrego Garcia’s wife had an order of protection against him for a month in 2021.
Abrego Garcia is “not a sympathetic figure,” the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media Wednesday, saying he is “not the upstanding ‘Maryland Man’ the media has portrayed him as.”
From a legal standpoint, however, the issue of Abrego Garcia’s character is largely irrelevant to the question of whether the Trump administration is obligated to facilitate his release from a prison to which he was mistakenly sent with little-to-no due process.
“The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit wrote Thursday. “Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order.”
“If he is a gang member, you have to prove it in court. If he is a domestic abuser, you have to prove it in court,” an attorney for the 29-year-old El Salvador native told ABC News. “If you want to revoke his withholding grant, the government is capable of doing that — but you have to prove it in court.”
Though Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally and was subject to possible deportation, an immigration judge in 2019 granted a withholding of his removal to his home country of El Salvador due to fear of persecution.
After U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that ruling, the case has become a test of the power of the executive branch versus the courts.
The ‘worst of the worst’?
President Donald Trump, upon entering office in January, pledged that his immigration crackdown would deport the “worst of the worst” migrants to offshore prisons, and he has invoked the 18th century Alien Enemies Act to carry out the removals with little-to-no due process, by arguing that gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua constitute a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.
The Trump administration has repeatedly labeled Abrego Garcia a terrorist and has said he’s a member of MS-13 and a human trafficker. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that, regardless of whether he ever leaves the Salvadoran prison, Abrego Garcia will not be returning to the U.S.
“He should not be in our country,” Bondi said. “He was deported. They needed one additional step in paperwork, but now MS-13 is characterized as they should be, as a foreign terrorist organization. So he is not coming back to our country.”
Court records describe Abrego Garcia as a father of three special needs children with a history of alleged domestic violence, including having a temporary order of protection against him in 2021 in which his wife cited being slapped, hit with an object, and being detained against her will. The case was closed about a month later when his wife failed to appear for a court hearing.
In a statement released to ABC News Wednesday through her attorney, Vasquez Sura — who has been vocal in her support of Abrego Garcia — said, “After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a protective order in case things escalated. We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling. Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father, and I will continue to stand by him and demand justice for him.”
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia have denied his association with the violent MS-13 gang, arguing he is an innocent father who, by the Trump administration’s own admission, was deported to his home country in error and in violation of the court order barring his deportation there.
Undated photo provided by the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, a man identified by Jennifer Vasquez Sura as her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is led by force by guards through the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador.
U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland via AP
Abrego Garcia left his home in El Salvador in 2011 at the age of sixteen after a local gang extorted his family’s business, threatened to rape and kill his sisters, and made repeated threats on his life, according to immigration court filings.
His lawyers said he slowly built a life in the United States, meeting his future wife, moving in together to take care of her two children from an earlier relationship — one with epilepsy and another with autism — and learning the skills needed to become a skilled sheet metal worker. Living in the United States for 14 years, he spent nearly as much time in the U.S. as he did growing up in El Salvador.
‘See no evil, hear no evil’
In 2019, after dropping his wife off at work and his children off at school, Abrego Garcia was picked up by local police as he was attempting to find work in a Home Depot parking lot in Hyattsville, Maryland, according to his immigration court testimony. According to one of the documents released Wednesday by the DOJ — a gang field interview sheet from the Prince George’s County Police Department in Maryland — Abrego Garcia wore a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie emblazoned with images of rolls of money covering the eyes and ears of former U.S. presidents, which police claimed tied him to MS-13.
“Officers know such clothing to be indicative of the Hispanic gang culture,” the report said, noting that the meaning of the clothing is “see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil.”
“Wearing the Chicago Bulls hat represents that they are a member in good standing with the MS-13,” the report said.
According to the report, officers contacted a “past proven and reliable source of information” who said that Abrego Garcia was a ranking member of MS-13. Abrego Garcia had the rank of “Chequeo” and had the moniker “Chele,” according to the informant. According to the DOJ, a chequeo is a low level member of MS-13.
The DHS report added that Abrego Garcia was in possession of $1,178 at the time of his arrest.
The report noted that Abrego Garcia was in the company of three other men when he was arrested, one of whom, according to police, had an extensive criminal history and was known as an active gang member. Another was linked to MS-13 based on a confidential source, the report said.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant in this handout image obtained by Reuters on April 9, 2025.
Abrego Garcia Family via Reuters
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers allege that the detective who authored the gang field interview sheet linking him to MS-13 was later suspended by the Prince George’s County Police Department.
The Hyattsville City Police Department later confirmed that an incident report existed for the Home Depot incident, but Abrego Garcia was never named in the report, and he did not appear in any other incident report.
“I attended his bond hearing and was shocked when the government said he should stay detained because Kilmar is an MS-13 gang member,” his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura said in a sworn declaration last month. “Kilmar is not and has never been a gang member. I’m certain of that.”
Immigration judge Elizabeth Kessler denied releasing him on bond, writing that his release would endanger the public because “evidence shows that he is a verified member of MS-13.” However, Judge Kessler noted that the two documents used to prove his membership in the gang “appear at odds” with each other.
According to Judge Kessler’s memorandum, one document used as evidence — a Form I-213 — alleged that Abrego Garcia was detained “in connection with a murder investigation,” and his lawyers argue the document was erroneous. The other document — a gang field interview form filled out by a Prince George’s County Police detective — said Abrego Garcia was arrested because he was loitering outside the Home Depot.
According to Judge Kesler, the main piece of evidence to support his affiliation with MS-13 was the gang field interview form that suggested a “past, proven, and reliable source of information” said Abrego Garcia was a ranking member of the gang, and he was unable to rebut that allegation. An appeals court later affirmed the judge’s decision.
Abrego Garcia remained in custody while the immigration proceedings against him continued, and he missed the birth of his own child. In June 2019, he married his wife through the glass barrier of his visitation room at Howard Detention Center in Maryland.
After a lengthy hearing in which Abrego Garcia offered credible testimony, according to an immigration judge, he was granted “withholding of removal status,” which prohibited him from being deported back to El Salvador because he might be persecuted by the gang that extorted his family.
His application for asylum, submitted at the same time, was denied because he had waited too long to apply.
‘I told him he would come back home’
In the five years since he was granted limited protected status, Abrego Garcia supported his family by being employed as a sheetmetal worker; he secured a five-year apprenticeship in 2024 to become a licensed journeyman; and he enrolled at the University of Maryland, where he took classes every other Thursday, according to his wife.
“Kilmar continued to be the supportive, loving, reliable, and law-abiding man I know and love. He was never arrested or accused of a crime. And to my knowledge, he never again was stopped by the police officers that accused him of being a gang member in 2019. We really believed that the false accusations had been cleared up and that they were behind us,” his wife said.
But last month, on March 12, Abrego Garcia was pulled over for what he thought was a routine traffic stop, according to Vasquez Sura. As his son with autism sat in the backseat, Abrego Garcia pulled into an Ikea parking lot where ICE officers told him that his “immigration status had changed.”
“Kilmar was crying, and I told him he would come back home because he hadn’t done anything wrong,” his wife told ABC News.
Three days later — the same day the Trump administration deported three planes of noncitizens to El Salvador — Vasquez Sura said she heard from Abrego Garcia for the last time.
“That call was short, and Kimar’s tone was different,” she said. “He was scared.”
She later identified her husband in some of the videos and photos distributed by the Salvadoran government. According to Vasquez Sura, their family relies on Abrego Garcia for his “constant care and stability,” and their son with autism has begun acting up since he was deported.
“Although he cannot speak, he shows me how much he missed Kilmar. He has been finding Kilmar’s work shirts and smelling them, to smell Kilmar’s familiar scent,” she said. “I need to know when my husband is coming home.”
During a press briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested that day will never come.
“There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who’s going to live a peaceful life in Maryland,” she said.
