The deportation case of a union sheet metal apprentice in Maryland has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and is drawing worldwide attention and support from the highest levels of the American labor movement.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, 29, is a first-year apprentice at Sheet Metal Local 100 outside of Washington, D.C. and was working full time learning his trade while supporting his wife, their autistic five-year-old son, and her two other children. On March 12 he was arrested. Three days later he was deported to El Salvador, where he’s being held in a notorious prison called the Center for Terrorism Confinement.
The Trump administration has said in court filings that Abrego Garcia is a member of the gang MS-13, which began in Los Angeles in the 1980s among Salvadoran immigrants. The Trump administration designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization on Feb. 20. Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime and he and his family deny that he’s a member of any gang. In fact, according to records from a 2019 immigration case, Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador precisely because he wanted to stay out of a gang. The son of a former San Salvador police officer, he left the country at age 16 and entered the United States illegally in around 2011. That was after a violent gang called Barrio 18 demanded that his family hand him over to become a member when the family’s homemade pupusa business could no longer afford to pay the gang’s demands for extortion. A judge in 2019 denied his asylum petition but also granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador because of a well-founded fear of gang persecution. The Department of Homeland Security issued him a work permit, and Abrego Garcia checked in with ICE yearly.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador violated the judge’s order. In court filings, the Trump administration says the deportation was an “administrative error.” But it has also said they can’t get him back. That argument did not prove very credible to Circuit Court Judge Stephanie Thacker. Under Trump’s orders, the United States is paying the government of El Salvador to imprison deportees. On April 4, Judge Thacker gave the administration until April 7 to return Abrego Garcia, and her decision was upheld April 7 by a three-judge panel. The administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which delayed the deadline and then issued a decision April 10 siding with Abrego Garcia but saying it was outside the jurisdiction of the judiciary to order the administration to engage with a foreign government.
Abrego Garcia’s fate has drawn enormous national attention, including from the union movement. SMART has been demanding his return and asking supporters to call their member of Congress. The national AFL-CIO is echoing that call.
At the annual legislative conference put on by North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU), NABTU president Sean McGarvey also spoke up for Abrego Garcia.
“We demand (he) be returned to us and his family now,” McGarvey said addressing attendees. “Bring him home!”
Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele visited President Trump in the White House April 14 and said he does not plan to release Abrego Garcia.
