Police believed Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang for two reasons: He was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and an unnamed informant had told them so.
The two pieces of evidence were not enough to keep Abrego Garcia in federal immigration custody in 2019, when authorities in Maryland arrested him, according to a court filing last month.
Nearly six years later, they appear to be the basis for shipping him to a foreign megaprison with no legal recourse.
'Administrative error' leads to deportation
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three and protected legal resident who has lived in Maryland since 2011 and is originally from El Salvador, was deported to a high-security jail in El Salvador on March 15. The Trump administration admitted last week that his deportation was an “administrative error” due to his protected status, but refused to commit to bringing him home.
The administration challenged a judge's Friday ruling that the government bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States. It argued that Garcia was a member of MS-13, citing the accusation from 2019, and said he posed a threat to national security.
"While there is no doubt a 'public interest in preventing aliens from being wrongfully removed,' there is an overwhelming public interest in not importing members of violent transnational gangs into this country," lawyers for the Justice Department wrote in a filing on Friday.
The argument echoed claims made repeatedly by some of the administration's highest-ranking officials in recent days, including Vice President JD Vance.
"What is it about congressional Democrats that get more angry at deporting violent gang members than they do at the victims of those violent gang members?" Vance said on Fox News last week. "I don’t even understand where they’re coming from. They’ve gone off the deep end, and they’ve got to come back to reality.”
Reality appears to be more nuanced.
Arrest in 2019 based in part on Chicago Bulls hat
On March 28, 2019, Abrego Garcia and three other noncitizens were apprehended by local authorities while soliciting work outside of a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland, according to Abrego Garcia’s initial petition filed last month.
The court document states that upon his arrest, authorities with the Prince George County Police Department accused Abrego Garcia of being affiliated with MS-13. After he repeatedly denied being affiliated with the notorious international crime group and did not provide officers with information about other gang members, authorities turned Abrego Garcia over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the petition states.
Prince George's County police officers then produced a Gang Field Interview Sheet for ICE that “explained that the only reason to believe Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was a gang member was that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique,” the court document states.
Abrego Garcia then made multiple attempts to obtain additional information from local authorities to support the allegation that he was a gang member but was denied several times, the court document states. He simultaneously applied for asylum, arguing that gang members would torture or kill him if he was sent back to his home country, according to the court document.
The Prince George's County Police Department declined to comment.
Judge issues protective order
While in custody, he married his wife, a U.S. citizen, at a Maryland immigration detention center, and was unable to be with her for the birth of their son, the court document states.
An immigration judge granted him a deportation protection order on Oct. 10, 2019, and he was released shortly afterward, according to the document. A more recent filing from Abrego Garcia's attorney quotes the judge as describing Abrego Garcia as "credible."
ICE never appealed the judge’s decision.
Nearly six years later, they apprehended Abrego Garcia in an IKEA parking lot while his 5-year-old son, who is autistic, was in the backseat of their car. ICE did not return a request for comment.
The Trump administration sent Abrego Garcia and nearly 300 others to a notorious megajail in El Salvador, defying a court order blocking the effort. The administration claimed the men were all Venezuelan gang members.
Court documents show that immigration officials relied on tattoos and social media activity to justify the gang affiliations.
Judge calls government claims 'chatter'
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a phone call that the administration's repeated accusations that his client is a gang member "endangers his life."
He argued that, regardless, the administration did not have the right to deport him.
“A: We totally deny that it was true in 2019. B: There’s no allegation even from them that he’s done anything since 2019," Sandoval-Moshenberg said. "And then C: Even if you believed that all of those things about him were true, they still concede that they can’t do what they did.”
At a hearing for Abrego Garcia's case in U.S. District Court on Friday, Judge Paula Xinis chalked up the government’s claims to “just chatter.”
“In a court of law, when someone is accused of membership in such a violent and predatory organization, it comes in form of indictment or criminal proceeding so we can assess facts,” she said. “I haven’t seen any of those.”
Xinis then ruled in favor of Abrego Garcia, ordering the government to bring him back to the U.S.
Supreme Court intervenes
But on Monday, at the request of the Trump administration, the Supreme Court issued an administrative stay that temporarily paused the order.
The Supreme Court also tossed out a lower court's order blocking the Trump administration's deportation of the 300 men. The administration did so without any legal process, citing the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that allows the government to detain noncitizens during a period of war or invasion.
"It is a bad day to be a terrorist and criminal alien in the United States of America," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X in the hours afterward.
In a post on his social media company Truth Social, President Donald Trump described the court's decisions as "a great day for justice in America!"
In similarly unprecedented fashion, the Trump administration has been apprehending foreign students en masse, most of whom are Muslim, arguing that they pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
In response the Supreme Court's ruling, Sandoval-Moshenberg again noted in a filing on Monday that Abrego Garcia has lived in the U.S. for years and has never been charged with a crime.
"The Government’s contention that he has suddenly morphed into a dangerous threat to the republic is not credible," he wrote.
