Trump DOJ plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia

Kilmar Abrego Garcia pleads not guilty to human smuggling charges

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador pleads not guilty to charges of Human smuggling.

WASHINGTON - The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that the West African nation of Liberia has agreed to accept Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and he could be deported there as early as Oct. 31. 

What we know:

In court filings, the Department of Justice said that the Department of Homeland Security 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."

The removal could be "as soon as October 31," per DOJ. 

"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."

Big picture view:

This isn't the first African country Homeland Security officials have said they would send Abrego Garcia. Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana were all named in previous months, but all three countries said they would not take him. 

In August, Abrego Garcia declined a plea deal that would have deported him to Costa Rica, his preferred country of deportation, if he pleaded guilty to felony smuggling charges. 

Earlier this week, Abrego Garcia's lawyers subpoenaed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to testify over the government’s decision to investigate and pursue a criminal case against him. 

Blanche is one of at least five government officials Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have subpoenaed to appear in a two-day evidentiary hearing next month in which Abrego Garcia will seek dismissal of his criminal case on the grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution/

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ruled earlier this month that Abrego Garcia’s legal team had established a "realistic likelihood" of vindictiveness in his criminal case, which was initiated by the Justice Department while he was detained in El Salvador. Crenshaw ordered new discovery and a two-day evidentiary hearing, scheduled for the first week in November. 

The backstory:

Abrego Garcia has been in ICE custody in Pennsylvania after being released from a federal prison in Tennessee, where he was held on human smuggling charges. Following his release, Abrego Garcia returned to Baltimore, where he was detained by ICE. 

The Salvadoran national was wrongfully deported to his native country in March, accused of being a member of MS-13, despite a 2019 order from an immigration judge barring his removal to El Salvador due to fear of persecution. Ties to MS-13 were never corroborated and Abrego Garcia has maintained his innocence.

Now, the Republican administration is trying to deport him again under the ongoing assertion that he was operating as a human smuggler during his time in the U.S. Those allegations stem from a 2022 traffic stop in which Abrego Garcia was pulled over with eight passengers who he said had been working on a construction job with him in Missouri. 

Abrego Garcia was not arrested and no criminal charges resulted from the stop. He was allowed to drive on with only a warning about an expired driver’s license, according to a report about the stop released last month by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

While ICE officials later admitted in a court filing that his initial deportation was due to an "administrative error," the Trump administration has persisted in its efforts to have him removed from the country.