New York, US (EFE).- Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran who spent nearly three months in prison in El Salvador after being mistakenly sent there and later returned to the United States, alleges that the Trump administration used the threat of deportation to Uganda to force him into a guilty plea.
Ábrego’s attorneys stated in a court filing on Saturday that the US Department of Justice pressured him to plead guilty to two felony charges by offering deportation to Costa Rica once he served any criminal sentence.
“Along with that proposal, the government presented a letter to Mr. Ábrego’s lawyer confirming that he could live freely in that country, that Costa Rica would accept him as a refugee or grant him residency, and that he would not be returned to El Salvador,” his lawyers said in the filing.
However, when Ábrego resisted the deal, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials reportedly told his attorneys that authorities had decided instead to deport him to Uganda.
“Coercive tactics” alleged
“There is only one interpretation of these facts: the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Abrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or his transfer to Uganda, where his security and freedom would be threatened,” Abrego’s lawyer Sean Hecker wrote in the court document.
On Friday, Abrego was released from a Tennessee jail while awaiting trial on federal charges of human smuggling and a parallel deportation proceeding.
He was initially brought back to the US to face accusations of transporting undocumented migrants inside the country.
The Salvadoran had previously been held for nearly three months in El Salvador, a detention his lawyers described as the result of a US government “error” before he was returned to Tennessee.
DHS reaction and Uganda deal
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem reacted to his release by again referring to Abrego as “a monster” and accusing the judge of showing “disdain” for the safety of US citizens.
Earlier this week, the Ugandan government announced it had reached an agreement with the United States President Donald Trump administration to accept deportees from third countries expelled from the US.
The court is now expected to decide on both Abrego’s federal charges and his immigration case, as his attorneys argue that Washington is leveraging deportation threats to extract a guilty plea. EFE
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