The Trump administration has identified Liberia as the next destination for deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an accused MS-13 gang member and human smuggler whose case has become one of the administration’s most closely watched immigration enforcement battles.
According to court filings recently made public, federal immigration authorities intend to remove Abrego Garcia to the West African nation of Liberia by October 31, pending approval from a federal judge.
“Federal Defendants hereby provide notice that they have identified a new country for removal that has agreed to accept Petitioner: the Republic of Liberia,” the Department of Justice wrote in its filing. “Although Petitioner has identified more than twenty countries that he purports to fear would persecute or torture him if he were removed there, Liberia is not on that list.”
The filing notes that Liberia “is a thriving democracy and one of the U.S.’s closest partners on the African continent,” adding that its use of English as a national language “may ease Abrego Garcia’s adjustment.”
A Long Trail of Deportation Disputes
Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, has been at the center of a protracted legal fight between the Trump administration and illegal immigrant advocates.
He was deported to El Salvador earlier this year despite a withholding of removal order — a form of legal protection granted when a person faces likely persecution or torture in their home country. But he returned to the United States in June, and since then, federal prosecutors and his attorneys have sparred over where he can legally be sent.
The Justice Department previously proposed sending him to Eswatini, and later to Uganda, but Abrego Garcia has objected to nearly every proposed destination.
“Your attorney has informed us, however, that you fear persecution or torture in Uganda,” U.S. immigration authorities wrote in a September email to his lawyers. “That claim of fear is hard to take seriously, especially given that you have claimed (through your attorneys) that you fear persecution or torture in at least 22 different countries.”
Those countries include not only El Salvador and Uganda but also Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Argentina, Venezuela, and Haiti, among others.
Accusations of Gang and Smuggling Ties
Prosecutors allege Abrego Garcia is an active MS-13 member who engaged in human and drug smuggling while in the United States. According to a federal grand jury indictment, he was arrested during a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee while driving eight illegal immigrant passengers, none of whom had luggage and all of whom listed his address as their own.
He has also faced domestic violence allegations from his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who in 2020 and 2021 accused him of punching her, scratching her eye, and dragging her from a car during a fight. Vasquez Sura has since walked back some of those statements, describing them as “isolated incidents.”
Abrego Garcia’s legal team has maintained that deporting him to any country where he might face harm would violate international human rights obligations. Federal prosecutors, however, argue that his record of criminal conduct and alleged gang ties make him a clear threat to public safety who must be removed.
Judicial Oversight May Delay Removal
Whether the deportation proceeds by the administration’s Oct. 31 target date remains uncertain. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee presiding over the case in Maryland, has ordered that Abrego Garcia remain in federal custody pending an evidentiary hearing on the proposed removal.
If the transfer to Liberia moves forward, it would mark one of the most unusual deportation arrangements of the Trump era — involving an African nation accepting a Central American national under bilateral cooperation with the United States.
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