Kilmar Armand Abrego Garcia Was Sent to a Prison in El Salvador — His Legal Status Explained

What should have been a typical day for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia suddenly turned into one of fear and devastation when the Maryland father was arrested by ICE agents. According to The Atlantic, on March 12, 2025, Garcia was picking his 5-year-old son up from his grandmother's when his car was stopped by immigration officers.

While waiting for his wife to arrive so she could collect their son, Garcia was told that his protection status had changed. ICE agents then took the handcuffed Garcia away and transported him to an ICE staging facility in Texas. From there, Garcia and other detainees were put on a plane and flown to El Salvador, where they were booked into the Center for Terrorism Confinement in Tecoluca. What was Garcia's legal status in the United States? Details explained.

Exactly six years before Garcia was taken by ICE agents, he was arrested outside of a Home Depot in a Maryland suburb while looking for work as a day laborer, per The New York Times. Prince George's County police asked Garcia if he was a gang member but didn't believe him when he said no. He was taken into custody by ICE agents who did not allow Garcia to call his then-girlfriend until the following morning.

Three months later, Garcia and his girlfriend, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, were married at a deportation center where he was being kept. Sura was a U.S. citizen who said in a statement, "We were separated by glass and were not allowed physical contact." In October 2019, Garcia finally got a win with the courts when a judge granted him a special status known as "withholding from removal." This status was predicated on the fact that if Garcia was deported, he would face "violence and torture."

Back in 2011, Garcia fled El Salvador and came to the United States illegally. He escaped because his family's business was "often extorted by a local gang called Barrio 18, which eventually began a campaign of threats and violence" against them, per court documents obtained by The Times. Garcia's legal status acknowledged that returning to El Salvador could be a death sentence.

In a Homeland Security press release, which quoted a Fox News interview, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said that Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang. This was echoed by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia Mclaughlin. The latter took things a step further and compared Garcia to Osama bin Laden, calling them both terrorists.

According to a filing by Garcia's lawyers that was obtained by Newsweek, the "U.S. government has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation." The idea that Garcia was a member of MS-13 goes back to his 2019 arrest, when ICE officials said "he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie." They also claimed a "confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique," who are based out of New York, where Garcia has never lived.

When he was arrested again in March 2025, ICE agents once again asked about Garcia's involvement with MS-13. While speaking to his wife on the phone from a Baltimore detention center, Garcia said the agents referenced a restaurant his family frequented and highlighted a photo of him playing basketball. Garcia does not have a criminal record in El Salvador or the United States.