Authorities Arrest Kilmar Abrego Garcia At Immigration Appointment

BALTIMORE — A 30-year-old Salvadoran national with alleged MS-13 ties, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, surrendered to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday amid a chaotic legal battle over his deportation.

As NBC News reports:

The check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Baltimore was part of the conditions of his release from federal custody on parole on Friday.

While such meetings are usually routine and are meant for case updates, Abrego’s attorneys said they expected he would be taken into ICE custody during the check-in after the Trump administration announced over the weekend its intention to deport him to Uganda.

“There was no need to take him into ICE detention. … The only reason they took him into detention was to punish him,” for using his constitutional right to speak up and fight proceedings, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego’s attorneys, said Monday morning.

Sandoval-Moshenberg said on Friday that a notice said the 8 a.m. meeting on Monday would be for an interview.

“Clearly that was false,” he asserted.

Abrego illegally crossed the southern border at 16. In 2019, an immigration judge ruled he couldn’t be deported to El Salvador, citing a “well-founded fear of gang persecution.”

That didn’t stop the Trump administration from deporting him to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center in March — a move later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. He was returned to the United States in June and immediately detained on human smuggling charges.

He has denied those charges and rejected a plea deal that would’ve required him to admit guilt and stay behind bars.

That offer, floated late Thursday, included resettlement in Costa Rica — but only if he pleaded guilty and remained in detention. Abrego refused. By Friday, he was released from a Tennessee detention center. Hours later, DHS told his attorneys they planned to deport him to Uganda — a country he has no ties to and where he has never lived.

His legal team quickly responded with a new lawsuit, challenging both the unusual deportation plan and his recent detention. They argue the government is retaliating because it was forced by court order to bring him back to the U.S.

“The government immediately responded to Mr. Abrego’s release with outrage,” the filing states. ICE officials allegedly contacted his attorneys minutes after his release and ordered him to report to Baltimore’s field office Monday.

This case has become a political flashpoint in the broader debate over immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump’s second term.

In a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, a state highway patrol officer pulled over Abrego’s vehicle, which was carrying nine passengers allegedly bound for a construction job in Maryland. The Department of Homeland Security says the stop supports its smuggling charges, but the officer only issued a warning. The footage remained dormant until April 2025 — after his deportation was challenged.

His attorneys also accuse the government of “forum shopping” — trying to deport him anywhere that will take him, regardless of his connections or legal standing.

Immigration advocacy groups have called the prosecution politically motivated. The Trump administration says it’s focused on keeping dangerous individuals out of U.S. communities.

Polling from earlier this year indicates the country remains deeply divided. An Economist/YouGov survey found 87% of Democrats supported bringing Abrego back to the U.S., while 54% of Republicans opposed it.

For now, his fate hangs in legal limbo — and the case continues to stir tensions over immigration, due process, and national security.

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