Kilmar Abrego Garcia was severely beaten, deprived of sleep and subjected to psychological torture at an El Salvador mega-prison after he was wrongly deported by the Trump administration, his lawyers said in a court filing.
Mr Abrego Garcia spent more than three weeks at the notorious terrorism confinement centre known as Cecot before he was transferred to another lock-up in El Salvador and ultimately brought back to the US to face criminal charges.
In a filing Wednesday, Mr Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued that in light of the abuse he was subject to at the prison, he should be returned to Maryland to contest his continued detention in the state where he was living with his wife and child before his arrest in March by immigration officials.
“Once again the media is falling all over themselves to defend Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” department of homeland security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “We hear far too much about gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims.”
RM Block
Mr Abrego Garcia’s case has become a lightning rod for US president Donald Trump’s immigration policy, under which the administration has increased deportations of undocumented migrants. Attorney general Pam Bondi has said an investigation determined that Mr Abrego Garcia was a member of the criminal gang MS-13 – a claim he denies – and a “danger to our community”.
His lawyers said in the filing that when he and about 260 other deportees arrived at Cecot on March 15th, they were greeted by a prison official who stated, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.”
He was then forced to strip and “subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster”, his lawyers wrote. After that, the lawyers claim, his head was shaved and he was beaten with wooden batons as he was he was frogmarched to a cell with some 20 other Salvadorans. The inmates were forced to kneel on the floor all night “with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion”, said the filing.
Mr Abrego Garcia’s attorneys also said his experience at Cecot undercuts the claim that he has gang ties. Prison officials moved some inmates to other cells if they believed them to be gang members, but they did not move Mr Abrego Garcia, said the filing. “Prison officials explicitly acknowledged that plaintiff Abrego Garcia’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him ‘your tattoos are fine’.” – Bloomberg
