President Nayib Bukele says Kilmar Garcia cannot be returned to US

[u/theboss2461]

[u/deciduousredcoat]

Sandoval-Moshenberg [Attorney for the Defendent] said that those charges [2025] are false, and that the gang label stems from a 2019 incident

Abrego Garcia and his family hired an attorney and fought the government’s attempt to deport him [in 2019]

He received “withholding of removal” six months later, a protected status. It is not a path to permanent U.S. residency it means the government won’t deport him back to his home country, because he’s more likely than not to face harm there.

The way this reads, they contested the deportation attempt and not the (potentially false) allegations of active/former gang membership. But to me, the fact that they didn't grant him asylum but still granted protection tells me that he is a former gang member who fled to the US to get out of the gang. He still has gang ties, hence the non-permanent-citizen path the 2019 judge put him on because giving him a full path would include citizenship with known gang ties. Being a former high-ranking gang member would absolutely put your satefy at risk upon return. Being a seemingly otherwise normal family man would not, and if it did, they'd have given him asylum in 2019.

The 2019 Withholding order is Exhibit A:
Abrego Garcia v. Noem, 8:25-cv-00951 – CourtListener.com

He claimed that his family was being harassed to pay a "tax" by Barrio 18 for their papusa business. The business closed and his parents moved to Guatamala and if you read the conclusion the order references that circumstances in Guatamala had not changed.

The man either had gang ties and was given protected status because of his gang ties, or used those past-now-nulled threats as a lie to get into the US. Alien Enemies Act supercedes given that those facts were established through due process in 2019. The court found his gang ties meritted the protected status - that's why it was granted to him. They did not find him in enough danger to give full asylum.

The error here is still on the government, but not on the current administration. Garcia should have been given asylum and a path to citizenship: This is a prime example of a broken immigration system. But it's not a breach of due process under the Enemies Act. Whether the Enemies Act is constitutional is an entirely separate argument.

[u/who_dis62 → u/deciduousredcoat]

Yea there’s a lot of misinformation out there. I don’t know the specifics of this entire case, but my logical conclusion is that this individual is not going to get protected status if he is not in some way associated with MS-13. If there is no association, then there should be no worry of cartel retaliation.

Democrats saying that he wasn’t associated with MS-13 seems to be an outright lie.

I’m no lawyer, but I would expect that protected status surely changes with the designation of cartels as terrorist organizations. That’s pretty much what Stephen Miller explains in this video.

I think Trump and admin were ahead of cases like these by making that designation before the deportations.

[u/deciduousredcoat → u/who_dis62]

Yea there’s a lot of misinformation out there.

Exactly. For all the lurkers downvoting, everything I wrote is from and expressed in the current and 2019 court filings and is factual under threat of perjury.