The Trump administration has identified a new country where it intends to imminently send Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador earlier this year, the Department of Justice said in a court filing Friday.
The West African nation of Liberia has agreed to accept Abrego Garcia, the DOJ officials said, and the Department of Homeland Security is aiming for a removal date as early as Oct. 31.
“Although [Abrego Garcia] has identified more than twenty countries that he purports to fear would persecute or torture him if he were removed there, Liberia is not on that list,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “Liberia is a thriving democracy and one of the United States’s closest partners on the African continent.”
The Trump administration expects to file further notices pertaining to Abrego Garcia’s removal before a federal court in Maryland later Friday, the filing added, and U.S. officials have "received diplomatic assurances regarding the treatment of third-country individuals removed to Liberia from the United States and are making the final necessary arrangements for [Abrego Garcia’s] removal.”
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In a statement to Scripps News, Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg blasted the DOJ’s new proposal.
"Having struck out with Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana, ICE now seeks to deport our client Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia – a country with which he has no connection, thousands of miles from his family and home in Maryland. Costa Rica has agreed to accept him as a refugee, and remains a viable and lawful option. Instead, the government has chosen yet another path that feels designed to inflict maximum hardship. Their actions are punitive, cruel and unconstitutional,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
“Unless Liberia guarantees that it will not re-deport Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, then sending him to Liberia is no less unlawful than sending him directly to El Salvador a second time."
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Abrego Garcia’s name was thrust to the spotlight when he was deported to El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison in March, despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation there due to fear of persecution. The Trump administration has claimed Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, though he and his attorneys deny that allegation.
He was returned to the U.S. in June, only to immediately face new charges of human smuggling in Tennessee.
Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty to those allegations and has sought to force Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to testify in an upcoming hearing concerning Abrego Garcia's claim that his prosecution was unconstitutionally vindictive in nature.
The DOJ on Wednesday said it opposed that request, describing it as an “open-ended fishing expedition.”
Judge Paula Xinis, overseeing Abrego Garcia’s case in Maryland, has barred his removal while he’s awaiting trial in the Tennessee case. She had not yet weighed in on the DOJ’s new proposal to remove him to Liberia as of Friday afternoon.
