Kilmar Abrego Garcia delivers remarks during a rally before his check-in at the ICE Baltimore Field Office in Baltimore on Aug. 25. He was taken into custody by ICE. On Friday, ICE said he would be deported to Eswatini in southeast Africa. Photo by Hawn Thew/EPA
Sept. 6 (UPI) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has informed Kilmar Abrego Garcia that it plans to deport the Salvadoran national to the tiny African nation of Eswatini, rather than Uganda.
Abrego Garcia, a resident of Baltimore who is being detained at the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia, received an email by an ICE official obtained by CNN and then The Hill.
The email said because of Abrego Garcia’s concerns about being deported to Uganda, he will instead be sent to Eswatini in southeast Africa despite having no ties to Africa, including Eswatini, which a population of 1.2 million and is about the size of New Jersey.
“That claim of fear is hard to take seriously, especially given that you have claimed (through your attorneys) that you fear persecution or torture in at least 22 different countries,” the email said. “Nonetheless, we hereby notify you that your new country of removal is Eswatini, Africa.”
The countries he has raised concerns about include El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys sent an email to ICE that Abrego Garcia also “expresses a fear of torture and persecution upon removal to Eswatini,” ABC News reported.
“Third-country nationals previously removed from the United States to Eswatini have all been detained in extremely harsh and torturous conditions; that country has a well-documented record of human rights violations,” his attorneys said. “To our knowledge, Eswatini has offered no guarantees that it will not promptly deport Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador where he already experienced torture and will experience torture again.”
He was an inmate at a notorious mega prison in El Salavdor after he was deported in March, which the government later determined was an “administrative error.”
The new deportation plans were confirmed to CNN by an ICE official, who said “TRUE: An immigration judge ordered him removed and ICE will comply with that order.”
Abrego Garcia has said would prefer to go to Costa Rica, where he would have some form of legal status. The government has said he would be sent to the Central American nation if he pleads guilty to a federal human trafficking charge he has refused that option.
On Aug. 22, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. in Nashville, Tenn., ruled the government did not show he is a danger to U.S. citizens or a flight risk and was transferred from federal detention in Tennessee to his home in Baltimore while awaiting trial.
“The government’s general statements about the crimes brought against Abrego, and the evidence it has in support of those crimes, do not prove Abrego’s dangerousness,” Crenshaw wrote.
After his ruling, magistrate judge Barbara Holmes decided that Abrego Garcia would remain behind bars for at least 30 more days.
On the same day, District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland prevented federal officials from deporting him again without legal due process. On April 4, she ordered the Trump administration to return him from the prison in El Salvador, and the U.S. Supreme Court on April 10 ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return to the United States.
Garcia, 30, rejoined his wife and two children.
During a check-in with ICE three days later, he was placed in that agency’s custody.
On Aug. 27, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said that the Trump administration has been temporarily blocked from deporting Abrego Garcia until at least October as his latest challenge against deportation is resolved in court.
He has a hearing set for Oct. 6, and Xinis said she’ll issue a ruling within 30 days.
The judge didn’t remove him from ICE custody, though he must be within a 200-mile radius of the court in Maryland. Baltimore and the detention center are 218 miles apart.
He was initially sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, even though a 2019 court order was in place to bar deportation back to his native country due to fear of persecution. He was allowed to life and work legally in the U.S.
The Trump administration sent five men, all of whom have criminal backgrounds and convictions, to Eswatini nation in July. In addition to Eswatini, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda have said they willing to accept migrants deported from the U.S.
Eswatini, which gained full independence from Britain in 1968, was known as Swaziland until 2018. The landlocked nation, which is governed by a monarch, is bordered by South Africa to the west and Mozambique to the east. It has stunning natural landscapes, including hills and forests, in a list of attributes by Facts.net.
Swazi is the country’s official language, though English is also commonly used, and Eswatini’s largest city, Manzini, has a population of more than 100,000. Ninety percent of the country’s residents are Christian.
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