Maybe Kilmar Abrego Garcia should have stayed in jail -- or taken the plea deal.
On Friday, Abrego Garcia got released from jail in Tennessee on human trafficking charges. That put him at risk of deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, although a federal judge required 72 hours before ICE could act on a deportation order signed in 2019. The Department of Homeland Security started that clock immediately on his release, ordering Abrego Garcia to surrender to ICE exactly 72 hours after being served with the notice.
And right on time, Abrego Garcia did just that:
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested by immigration authorities at an ICE field office where he was set to be deported, putting the fate of the man who has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown into sharp focus.
“Today, ICE law enforcement arrested Kilmar Abrego Garcia and are processing him for deportation,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Monday.
“President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator to terrorize American citizens any longer,” she said.
The administration deported Abrego Garcia to his native El Salvador earlier in the year, and eventually court rulings forced them to bring him back to comply with an earlier ruling forbidding that destination for deportation. The Department of Justice then took another look at an incident in Tennessee where Abrego Garcia was caught transporting several men across state lines in the vehicle of a known human trafficker, a case which the Biden-era DoJ declined to pursue. This time, prosecutors indicted Abrego Garcia for human trafficking and had him arrested again, and that's how we find ourselves at this pass today.
His attorneys are livid, claiming that the intended deportation to Uganda is purely vindictive:
In a motion for dismissal of the charges against him, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said the federal government presented a last-ditch plea deal on Thursday, the day before he was due to be released from pre-trial detention. In it, prosecutors said he would be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to charges of smuggling undocumented immigrants across the United States.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers declined to keep Abrego Garcia in jail, but agreed to convey the offer of a plea bargain to their client. But the court filing states that “within minutes” of his release on Friday from a jail in Tennessee, Abrego’s counsel was informed by ICE that he would be deported to Uganda and “ordered him to report to ICE’s Baltimore Field Office Monday.”
“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,” the court filing read. “The same drive for retribution that fueled this criminal case evidently caused a dramatic change in the government’s position with respect to third-country removal.”
Is this vindictive? Perhaps, but the real intent seems more to be pour encourager les autres. The administration wants to send tough messages on deportation and illegal immigration. The message here tells illegal aliens to leave for the destination of their choice before DHS and ICE catch them and choose their destinations for them. It's not as if Abrego Garcia just got picked at random, either; he's been flagged for deportation for six years, after which he allegedly participated in human trafficking tied to Central American gang activity.
And even then, the DoJ did offer him a deal. If Abrego Garcia pled guilty to the charge he faces in Tennessee, he would be immediately deported to Costa Rica, where that government made clear that he would be received through normal immigration and not be detained. Rather than take that deal, Abrego Garcia decided to fight the charge even though he's not here legally in the first place. That's a rather stupid decision, and now Abrego Garcia gets to win the stupid prize for playing this stupid game.
In other words, have fun in Uganda. Abrego Garcia and his attorneys may be able to delay that process, but at the same time, the criminal case in Tennessee will proceed, and he might end up serving time in federal prison before getting deported to whatever destination ICE and DHS choose at that time. The Trump administration gets to look tough on criminal illegal aliens, Democrats get to keep embracing the 20% side of the crime and illegal-immigration issues, and both of those will only strengthen Trump's hand in the upcoming midterm elections. Abrego Garcia's not the only one playing for stupid prizes, clearly.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left's lies, new legislation wasn't needed to secure our border, just a new president.
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