UPDATE: "Kilmar Abrego Garcia is alive and secure but is under the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador"

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was taken into ICE custody in Beltsville, Maryland. Which is a sanctuary jurisdiction. This makes ICE job of apprehending illegal alien criminals much more difficult.

So kangaroo court Judge can blame ICE, tell ICE to hop to it, when he really should be blaming Prince George’s County’s liberal maggot government. Let them go down to El Salvador to retrieve Abrego Garcia. (sounds like the old movie title —Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia)
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AI generated>>>
Beltsville, Maryland, is located in Prince George’s County, which is considered a sanctuary jurisdiction. Prince George’s County has policies limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Local law enforcement and other officials generally do not assist ICE unless the individual in question has been convicted of serious violent felonies or gang-related crimes. For example, the county only notifies ICE about the release of individuals convicted of crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery, or similar offenses.

I looked at the Newsweek article at https://www.newsweek.com/kilmar-armando-abrego-garcia-deported-el-salvador-maryland-father-ms13-2054507 , which is cited in a Wikipedia article. But the Wikipedia article butchers what the source article actually says.

When Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested by police in 2019, he claimed he was not an MS-13 member. Police didn’t believe him. They filed a report saying that a confidential informant had identified him as an active member of an MS-13 group out of New York. Based on that report a judge affirmed his MS-13 connections and denied him bond, and another judge affirmed the ruling. Because he said he and his brother had been harassed and pursued by a local gang in San Salvador in an effort to extort his mother, he was issued a deportation order to anywhere but El Salvador. Another source said that the deportation order was not enforceable.

When he was detained recently he was asked specifically about a photo of him playing basketball (most likely with known MS-13 gang members) and a restaurant that Garcia frequented (again, most likely associated with known MS-13 gang members).

When his lawyers say that the US government has provided no evidence of MS-13 involvement, they may or may not be technically correct, given that there was no hearing about that directly. But there were 2 Maryland judges who affirmed his MS-13 connections based on the testimony of a confidential informant. And there was a deportation order to anywhere but El Salvador. DHS says that as others on the list of MS-13 members to be deported to El Salvador got taken off, Garcia’s name moved up on the list and the note saying not to be sent to El Salvador didn’t survive that shifting of names - which is why the government says it was an error that he was sent to El Salvador. It was not an error that he was deported; it was an error that he was deported to El Salvador.

Based on the photo and restaurant info that ICE asked about when Garcia was detained, they had been tracking his current, ongoing connections, most likely based on the confidential informant’s information on the New York clique of MS-13. If that was the case, ICE had not only the affirmation of 2 MD judges that he was a member of MS-13 but also ongoing surveillance to show the continuation of those connections.

Newsweek said they couldn’t find any traffic citations or anything else for him to support JD Vance’s claims that there were some. If Prince George County is a sanctuary jurisdiction, who knows what the real record is.

And one other thing. If the police had a mole within MS-13 they would present that info to the judges under seal to protect their informant. All the articles that fail to note that the evidence of his MS-13 involvement is under seal (rather than non-existent) are examples of yellow journalism. The articles cite his wife and his lawyers, who of course say he’s innocent - but fail to note that a mole within MS-13 claims otherwise and most likely has names and dates to back him up - which were most likely followed up on to get the photo and location where the alleged ongoing MS-13 contacts were being made.

I believe MS-13 was designated as a terrorist organization AFTER the deportation order for him had already been made. If the judges had already agreed that his MS-13 involvement was established on the basis of the sealed testimony they saw/heard, this guy has already had his due process and may be eligible for Gitmo since El Salvador is verboten. The current judge should let all her leftist supporters know that if the guy is returned from El Salvador he’s going to end up in Gitmo instead - all as a result of the due process he’s already received.

It was never going to be a question of whether he could be free to live his life with his family - either in the US, El Salvador, or anywhere else. It’s been established via due process that he belongs to a terrorist organization; you don’t just get to live your life as normal after that.

There is the sticky issue of how you defend yourself against claims made by a confidential informant. I don’t know how that all works, but if 2 judges in a sanctuary jurisdiction both agreed that the MS-13 involvement was legally established, I suspect the evidence might have been pretty good.

Doing some more looking, specifically regarding MS-13 identification and New York law enforcement. An interesting NPR article from 2017: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/18/544365061/identifying-ms-13-members

The Chicago Bulls hoodie that Garcia was wearing when he was arrested in 2019 is associated with MS-13 in New York, but without other identifiers it wouldn’t be considered a positive identification of membership or affiliation. Law enforcement doesn’t want to tip gang members as to what they look for, but in general there are images and numbers that are used to self-identify, with those markers becoming ever more subtle in order to hide from law enforcement. Sign language and non-verbal communications are another thing to look for.

And of course, if a mole within the clique identifies a person it is confirmed. That mole would easily be able to read and interpret the non-verbal communications directly to law enforcement and further evidence could confirm the accuracy.

I read an article (at https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/6-common-misconceptions-ms13-gang/ ) written by a guy who has interviewed a lot of MS-13 members, dispelling what he says are myths about the group. One of the things he said was that each country has its own leadership of their group. Guatemalans, for instance, don’t honor the decisions of the El Salvador leadership. Only those from El Salvador honor that, and the reason they do is because they fear what would happen to them if they were deported back to El Salvador. I thought it interesting that he specifically mentioned MS-13 members in the US fearing deportation back to El Salvador.

Another thing he said is that MS-13 does not force anybody to become a member because they need people who are devoted and won’t rat them out. The initiation to become a member is to murder somebody, and only after somebody shows that level of interest would they be “recruited”. IIRC the gang that Garcia says was threatening to force him into the gang was the rival gang to MS-13, but I wonder if the same dynamic holds true. It would be crazy to recruit somebody who wasn’t truly dedicated to the group and to its secrecy. The more likely threat for extortion would be to kill family members, not to recruit them into the gang.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was taken into ICE custody in Beltsville, Maryland. Which is a sanctuary jurisdiction. This makes ICE job of apprehending illegal alien criminals much more difficult.

"The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. ... Abrego Garcia ... has been lawfully present in the United States since 2019... has no criminal history and has never even been charged with a crime in the United States, El Salvador, or any other country...'ICE' took Abrego Garcia into custody without authority ... [and] no order of removal is part of the record in this case." Judge Thacker, joined by Judge King, 4th Circuit Court, Richmond, Virginia.

If the goal of ICE was to apprehend illegal alien criminals, they failed.

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