, the Maryland resident who was wrongly deported to a country in March, has been taken into custody by immigration authorities only days after his release from pretrial detention, where he was awaiting trial on human trafficking charges.
On Monday, Abrego Garcia’s attorney informed a gathering outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Baltimore Field Office that his client was taken into custody following an order issued last week to report to the office.
Earlier this year, Garcia’s incorrect deportation—which occurred despite a direct court order forbidding his removal to El Salvador—has emerged as a significant contentious case for the Administration amid its broad mass deportation initiative.
Upon his return to the United States, he was apprehended and charged with human trafficking, with evidence derived from bodycam footage recorded during a traffic stop.
This latest detention follows by only two days a court filing in which Abrego Garcia’s legal team accused the Trump Administration of attempting to “coerce” their client into pleading guilty to human trafficking charges, or otherwise face deportation to Uganda, a nation he has never visited.
In a motion seeking to dismiss the charges against him, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys stated that the federal government offered a final plea agreement on Thursday, the day before his scheduled release. Under this deal, prosecutors proposed his deportation to Costa Rica in return for him remaining incarcerated and pleading guilty to charges of smuggling undocumented immigrants into the United States.
Abrego Garcia’s legal team refused the option to keep him in jail but committed to present the plea bargain offer to their client. However, the court document indicates that “within minutes” of his Friday release from a Tennessee jail, Abrego’s counsel was notified by ICE that he would be deported to Uganda and was “ordered him to report to ICE’s Baltimore Field Office Monday.”
“These events allow for only one interpretation: the DOJ, DHS, and ICE are leveraging their combined authority to compel Mr. Abrego to choose between a guilty plea offering relative security, or extraordinary rendition to Uganda, a place where his safety and freedom would be jeopardized,” the court filing asserted. “The very same desire for retaliation that propelled this criminal case apparently led to a significant shift in the government’s stance regarding third-country removal.”