Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador in March and returned to the United States in June to face human smuggling charges he denies, is alleging that the Trump administration is pressuring him to plead guilty by threatening to deport him to Uganda.
In a court filing on Saturday, Abrego’s attorneys said the Justice Department is urging him to accept a plea deal on two felony counts, with the promise that he would be deported to Costa Rica — where he would not face imprisonment — after serving any sentence, POLITICO reported.
“In conjunction with that proposal, the government produced a letter to Mr. Abrego’s counsel confirming that he could live freely in that country, which would accept him as a refugee or grant him residency status, and promise not to refoul him to El Salvador,” Abrego’s lawyers argued in court papers.
After Abrego rejected the proposal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials informed his attorneys that the government had decided instead to deport him to Uganda. They added that the option of deportation to Costa Rica would remain available only if he agreed to plead guilty by Monday, according to the filing.
“There can be only one interpretation of these events: the DOJ, DHS, and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Abrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat,” Abrego’s attorney Sean Hecker wrote in the filing, per POLITICO.
The claims by Abrego’s attorneys were filed a day after his release from a Tennessee jail, where he had been held since returning to the United States in June. According to the filing, he has been ordered to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore on Monday morning.
Earlier this week, the Ugandan government announced it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to accept third-country deportees from the United States. Uganda’s foreign minister said the arrangement would exclude individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors, while prioritizing deportees originally from African nations.
Garcia is asking a federal judge in Tennessee to dismiss the criminal case against him, arguing that the human smuggling charges stem from what he describes as a politically motivated effort by the Trump administration to punish him.
Abrego’s case drew national attention after he was deported to El Salvador in March aboard one of three flights that also carried more than 100 Venezuelans, following President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. He was initially incarcerated at El Salvador’s CECOT maximum-security prison before being transferred to another facility amid international criticism of his removal.
Abrego, who entered the U.S. illegally more than a decade ago and lived primarily in Maryland with his wife and children, had previously been shielded from deportation to El Salvador under an immigration judge’s order that found he faced potential violence and persecution from a local gang.
Although a federal judge ordered the administration to return him to the United States, officials delayed compliance for months. His return was arranged only after federal prosecutors secured a smuggling indictment against him in Tennessee.
Last month, Abrego described his time in the Salvadoran prison, alleging he endured “severe beatings,” sleep deprivation, malnutrition, and other forms of mistreatment. Others recently released from CECOT in a U.S.-brokered prisoner exchange with Venezuela have made similar claims.
Administration officials, meanwhile, have accused Abrego of being affiliated with the MS-13 gang and of acting as a foreign terrorist, allegations he strongly denies.
Shortly after his release on Friday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem decried “activist liberal judges,” and said the administration “will not stop fighting till this Salvadoran man faces justice and is OUT of our country.”