
Erroneous deportation of Maryland father sends waves of fear through one of the largest Salvadoran communities in the US
CNN
The shockwaves of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s March 12 arrest and subsequent deportation to El Salvador – which the Trump administration says was a mistake – have spread well beyond the family and are rattling the south-central Maryland community.
A Maryland mother recently received two calls: One was from her husband, who said he had been pulled over after finishing his construction shift. The other was from Homeland Security, telling her she had just 10 minutes to pick up the couple’s 5-year-old son who was in the car with her husband. Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura raced to her husband’s side to hurriedly place their crying child in a car seat and say goodbye to her husband as he also wept. Now the shockwaves of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s March 12 arrest and subsequent deportation to El Salvador – which the Trump administration says was a mistake – have spread well beyond the family and are rattling the south-central Maryland community. Years prior to his arrest, Abrego Garcia had been deemed a gang member by the Prince George’s County Police Department in part because he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie, and on the word of an informant who said that he was an active member of the MS-13 gang – an allegation his attorneys continually denied, according to a recent court filing. But in 2019, an immigration judge granted him protected status, prohibiting the federal government from sending him to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia, who attorneys say fled gang violence in El Salvador more than a decade ago, has been sent to CECOT, the country’s notorious mega prison. Their son, who has autism, has been finding Abrego Garcia’s work shirts to smell his father’s familiar scent after his arrest, Vasquez Sura said in an affidavit. “This has been a nightmare for my family,” Vasquez Sura wrote in the affidavit. “My faith in God carries me, but I am exhausted and heartbroken. My children need their father.”