Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been taken into custody after arriving at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Baltimore. In a statement, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem confirmed his arrest and said that ICE “are processing him for deportation”.
He was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March, and then brought back to face criminal charges.
US authorities have informed him he may be deported to Uganda, following his refusal to accept a plea deal, his lawyers say.
His legal team accuses the US of trying to “coerce” him to plead guilty by threatening to re-deport him “halfway across the world”.
“The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him, to punish him for exercising his constitutional rights,” one of his attorneys, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told reporters outside the ICE office.
He said that Mr Abrego Garcia had filed a new federal lawsuit in Maryland challenging his current detention and potential deportation “to Uganda or any other country” until he has a trial.
A subsequent court order barred the government from removing Mr Abrego Garcia from the continental United States or altering his legal status until 16:00 Wednesday, unless a judge extends the order.
The new lawsuit has been assigned to US District Judge Paula Xinis, the same jurist who oversaw the initial lawsuit over Mr Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation to El Salvador.
They have said their client declined an offer to plead guilty to human smuggling charges in exchange for deportation to Costa Rica. He was asked to check in on Monday at the field office in Baltimore. Credit: bbc.com
