ICE Detains Kilmar Abrego Garcia Again

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram.
I cover the White House.

Speaker 5 And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

Speaker 4 And we also have NPR immigration correspondent Sergio Martinez-Beltrand here. Welcome to the pod, Sergio.
Hey y'all.

Speaker 4 Okay, so today on the show, we're talking about immigration and customs enforcement.

Speaker 4 They have once again detained Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, this time after he showed up at a mandatory ice check-in in Baltimore, Maryland yesterday. So Sergio, let's start with you.

Speaker 4 Abrego Garcia's case, you know, has really captured national attention in so many ways. Walk us through his story, what happened to him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. So Kilman Abrego Garcia was born in El Salvador and came to the U.S.
illegally when he was 16 years old. He says he was escaping gang death threats.
And since then, he's lived in Maryland.

Speaker 2 He got married to a U.S. citizen and is raising three children.
He was also working as a sheet metal worker.

Speaker 2 But in March, he was pulled over and eventually arrested and detained by immigration authorities.

Speaker 2 And three days later, just like that, he was deported to El Salvador and detained at a notorious maximum security prison there called Secote. It's meant to hold terrorists and alleged gang members.

Speaker 2 The thing is, Dipa, that he was not supposed to be deported there because of a 2019 immigration court order that found there was a well-founded fear of gang persecution if he returned to his home country.

Speaker 2 Now, the Trump administration conceded it had made an administrative error, but refused to bring him back.

Speaker 2 Eventually, after months of back and forth between the Trump administration and the courts, Abredo Garcia was returned to the U.S. to face a new unrelated case on criminal charges.

Speaker 2 Now, Abredo Garcia was indicted on two counts related to human trafficking. These are federal charges that stem from a traffic stop in Tennessee in 2022.

Speaker 2 His attorneys have said those charges are retaliatory.

Speaker 4 I see. Okay.
And so that has all happened. And this week with this check-in in Baltimore, you know, what were the latest developments? What happened?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the check-in. And, you know, that is the reason why we're talking about this, right? Because this week, Abreo Garcia had a mandatory check-in with ICE in Baltimore.

Speaker 2 And he showed up. He was taken into immigration custody again.

Speaker 2 Again, he was in the country without legal status. So there was always a possibility he could be deported.
And the Trump administration has vowed to do just that.

Speaker 2 Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam has said he will be sent to Uganda. Now, this is a country he has no connection to, but the administration has settled for that country, it seems like it.

Speaker 2 And there is this question deep of why Uganda, if he has no connection to it, right?

Speaker 2 And what we know is that according to Abreo Garcia's lawyers and court documents, the Trump administration had offered Abrego Garcia a deal.

Speaker 2 plead guilty to all the human smuggling charges and serve the imposed sentence and you'll be deported to Costa Rica.

Speaker 2 There he was going to be given illegal status, but Abreo Garcia refused the plea deal, so the Trump administration has decided to send him to Uganda.

Speaker 5 Which is really quite something.

Speaker 5 I mean, sending someone to Uganda when they're from El Salvador originally and had been sent to the Salvadoran prison, and now they're sort of threatening this idea that you'll be sent to a country in Africa,

Speaker 5 across the globe,

Speaker 5 or you could go to somewhere that's relatively close if you only plead guilty. It's certainly

Speaker 5 par for the course with the Trump administration trying to show

Speaker 5 this sort of tough guy approach on immigration, find something to wave the victory flag, say they were right, say, see, he pleaded guilty, and then use that as deterrence and fear for others who might come to the United States.

Speaker 4 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, Serhio, I want to clarify one point here.

Speaker 4 There's this question for him about whether or not he'll plead guilty and he doesn't want to, but what are these charges that, you know, he's saying he doesn't want to plead guilty to?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so what we're talking, Deepa, is about two federal charges that stem from a traffic stop in Tennessee in 2022.

Speaker 2 Based on body cam footage, we could see that the law enforcement agents who stopped Abreo Garcia saw that there were about nine people in the car and they said they were all going to Maryland from Tennessee.

Speaker 2 Now, there were some skepticism there from the law enforcement agents, but they decided to let him go.

Speaker 2 But the Trump administration decided to revive that traffic stub from 2022 and bring charges against Abrego Garcia.

Speaker 2 Now, it's important to note that his attorneys have said those charges are retaliatory and vindictive.

Speaker 4 Interesting. Okay.
And for both of you, I mean, as you're tracking this story and what's happening to Abrego Garcia, what is next? What are the next steps here?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, for now, he can't be deported. Abrego Garcia challenged his deportation to Uganda and detention.

Speaker 2 And a federal judge in Maryland has decided to extend for now the pause on his removal until he gets a chance to contest it. And we are expecting to see some movement on the new case this week.

Speaker 5 And the sort of revival of this whole controversy

Speaker 5 just shows once again how much Trump would rather be talking about immigration than anything else.

Speaker 5 Immigration, crime, deals, those are sort of the big things he wants to talk about compared to the economy, which of course, the tariffs that he's put in place have been leading to an increase in some prices in some sectors.

Speaker 5 It's less fertile ground for him to feel like he has something politically that he can

Speaker 5 be able to talk about in a strong way. But he's never been somebody who thought that the economy was really the main issue.

Speaker 5 He's said repeatedly since he became president that he always felt it was immigration.

Speaker 4 All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment.

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Speaker 4 And we're back. So, Serhio, I want to ask: what can Obrego Garcia's case tell us about how the Trump administration is approaching these immigration cases?

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, the reason why this case is so important and why we're talking about it so much is because at the core of it are questions about due process.

Speaker 2 Again, he was arrested and detained despite not being convicted of any crimes. He was sent to El Salvador despite a standing court order prohibiting exactly that.

Speaker 2 And then the Trump administration revived that 2022 traffic stop to bring federal charges against him.

Speaker 2 So there are questions about due process and whether the Trump administration has decided to ignore it. And we know the administration is willing to push the envelope on these issues of immigration.

Speaker 2 I know we've said the word revival over and over and over, but we are seeing that more and more.

Speaker 2 We're seeing that people are being arrested for minor infractions, and that's enough for them to be detained and potentially deported.

Speaker 2 We also know that the Trump administration has sent migrants to countries they have no connection to, like, you know, it has sent folks to Guantanamo in Cuba and the Secote in El Salvador.

Speaker 2 We have also seen the Trump administration's proclivity to slow walk court processes or even sidestep some orders.

Speaker 2 And yesterday, Deepa, the judge seeing Abreo Garcia's deportation case in Maryland kept asking the Department of Justice lawyer whether he understood that Abreo Garcia could not be deported.

Speaker 2 She wanted to make sure it was clear and on the record, he could not be deported. And that's, again, because of the Trump administration's track record.

Speaker 4 So has there been any pushback to that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, at times, there have been conservative judges who have admonished Trump for pushing the envelope on immigration issues.

Speaker 2 But again, the administration is willing to do whatever to fulfill this promise of deporting hundreds of thousands of people from the country.

Speaker 4 Yeah. But I also wonder, I mean, is Abreco Garcia's case, you know, a one-of-one? or is this something that's been happening with other people as well?

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, I think there are a lot of concerns from immigration attorneys and immigration activists about the due process of these folks.

Speaker 2 Again, from either those sent to Guantanamo, to Sekot, to those arrested in the streets of Washington, D.C. by ICE or other immigration agencies.

Speaker 2 You know, there have been concerns about due process, so it's not unique at this point.

Speaker 5 And beyond due process, it's the kinds of people that the administration said that it would be going after versus who they are going after.

Speaker 5 You know, they continue to say that they're going after the, quote, worst of the worst.

Speaker 5 But we've seen cases that are far less murky than Abrego Garcia's, where you have people with no criminal records at all, no allegations of anything untoward, just people who were, you know, riding their moped, making a delivery, and getting wrapped up by ICE.

Speaker 5 And beyond that, people of all walks of life, landscapers, farm workers, all of that.

Speaker 5 And we've heard the Trump administration, we've heard Trump himself say that there were going to be some exceptions, some carve-outs, but it seemed to be not much more than public relations because to this point, there still hasn't been any of that.

Speaker 5 Trump really wants to keep that kind of narrative, that kind of storyline that non-criminals are getting wrapped up out of the news headlines.

Speaker 5 And as long as they're out of the news headlines, he seems to be willing to let ICE do whatever it wants.

Speaker 4 Well, I will also note that, you know, you're talking about like the public relations element of this.

Speaker 4 All of this happening, everything with the Breco Garcia, other arrests that have happened that are a little bit more high-profile are things that the White House has been celebrating and posting on social media, making memes out of it.

Speaker 4 This is something that is really critical almost to the administration's immigration agenda. Is that right, Domenico?

Speaker 5 Absolutely. That's exactly what they want to be able to do.
We've heard Stephen Miller, advisor to the president,

Speaker 5 who's really been sort of a mastermind of the immigration policies from everything that we've seen,

Speaker 5 really sort of tout this. He wants to be able to kind of take it back to Democrats and say, oh, you're defending a gang member.

Speaker 5 Even if there's little to no credible evidence that that's true, they're looking to muddy the waters, make it seem like these are the worst of the worst, quote unquote.

Speaker 5 And the people who are wrapped up in these detentions, who have no criminal records, are not the ones they want to talk about.

Speaker 5 Instead, they want to be able to use these examples that are murky, muddy, to be able to use.

Speaker 5 use that as something that occupies the space in the public relations, TV, optics realm that really Trump is obsessed with.

Speaker 4 I want to ask both of you too as we kind of wrap this up here, Domenico, from polling, I'm curious how the public feels about immigration enforcement, about Trump's immigration agenda.

Speaker 4 And Sergeio, if you want to jump in on anything you've seen from the public on the ground, I'm curious what that looks like.

Speaker 5 Well, there was always the risk from Trump for going too far on immigration. You know,

Speaker 5 it happened in the first term as well when you saw those child separation policies.

Speaker 5 And that instinct to be sort of hard line, hard-nosed, tough guy image of all of this and how this is playing out, it does appear to have gone too far for a lot of Americans.

Speaker 5 Polling has certainly showed that, not with Republicans or the Republican base per se, but certainly with independents and overwhelming numbers of Democrats as well.

Speaker 5 So I think that it's something that the Republican Party has to be careful on, especially. in this new political landscape where

Speaker 5 it's been really volatile politically. In 2024, 2024, you know, Trump had a fairly diverse coalition that included Latinos.

Speaker 5 And there are a lot of Latino Republican members of Congress who have spoken out against some of these harsher deportation policies and saying that they just don't think that this is the right approach.

Speaker 2 And I think these tactics and policies from the Trump administration, I mean, they are having an impact on the ground when we're talking about immigrant communities.

Speaker 2 We are starting to see more and more people making the decision of voluntarily leaving the country because they are too scared of exactly what's happening here: of being sent to a third country or to being sent somewhere else, like Te Secote or Guantanamo.

Speaker 2 They're really scared of being ripped away from their families to a place that they have no connection to.

Speaker 2 We're also seeing more and more people making the decision of whether to leave their houses or ask people to buy groceries for them or even go to work.

Speaker 2 I mean, we have talked to a bunch of folks who do deliveries, and they are really worried about being in the road for so long and being stopped by the police. So,

Speaker 2 I mean, these policies are definitely having an impact in immigrant communities across the country.

Speaker 4 All right, we're going to have to leave it there for today. Thank you, Sergio, for your reporting and for bringing it to the pod.

Speaker 2 You're welcome. So good to be with y'all.

Speaker 4 I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.

Speaker 5 And I'm Domenico Montanero, senior political editor and correspondent.

Speaker 4 And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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