By Yvonne Hayes

On August 22, Kilmar Abrego García, a sheet metal apprentice and member of International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) Local 100, went home to his family in Maryland. The immigrant worker was released after months of incarceration, much of that in a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador where he had been deported by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without his constitutionally guaranteed right to due process.

Three days later, after speaking briefly to thank hundreds of supporters gathered outside the federal building in Baltimore, Maryland, Abrego García and his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura walked up the steps to report as required for an immigration interview.

Inside that federal building, a masked Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent took him into custody. A representative of the immigrant rights organization CASA told the crowd outside that Vasquez Sura, who has been leading the fight to bring her husband home, “firmly looked the officers in the face and said, ‘Remember this moment when you go home and see your kids. You have once again kidnapped my husband.’”

OPINION

Abrego García was forcibly detained by ICE on March 12 on his way home from work with his son in the car. Three days later, he was deported to El Salvador, allegedly for being a gang member affiliated with MS-13. Two weeks following his deportation, the government was forced to admit that they had made an “administrative error” because in 2019, an immigration judge had explicitly banned his deportation to El Salvador due to concerns over his safety. In response to a lawsuit by Vasquez Sura, on April 10 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the government to “facilitate” his return. The Trump administration claimed it had no authority to do so.

On May 12, as pressure built to bring Abrego García home, the government filed criminal charges in Tennessee alleging he was a human trafficker. And, in early June, U.S. authorities brought him back to the United States to stand trial and held him in a Tennessee jail until his August 22 release.

New threats by DHS

Immediately upon taking him back into custody on August 25, the government announced its intent to re-deport Abrego García, this time to Uganda. Only two days earlier, they had indicated that they would agree to send him to Costa Rica, which has said it will accept him as a refugee, if he would enter a guilty plea in the Tennessee case. Abrego García declined. His lawyers cite this shell game by the government as additional proof that this is a case of “vindictive and selective prosecution.”

Federal District Judge Paula Xinis, responding to a petition from the immigrant worker’s lawyers, issued a temporary order barring Abrego García’s deportation to allow her time to consider whether he should be deported to a country of his choosing and if he would be at risk in Uganda.

DHS officials then announced on September 5 that, even though they disagreed with concerns about Abrego García’s safety in Uganda, they would deport him to Eswatini instead — a country in Southern Africa, almost entirely surrounded by South Africa, with a border also shared to the east with Mozambique. Eswatini is known for harsh prison conditions. Its government has given no guarantees it would not just send Abrego García back to El Salvador.

Along with this announcement came a new motion the U.S. government filed with the court stating that if Abrego García is successful in reopening his asylum case he will be immediately returned to El Salvador despite the 2019 order barring his deportation to that country.

While immigration law requires that an asylum filing take place within a year of entering the United States, Abrego García’s lawyers point out that when he first came to the United States, he was a teenager fleeing extortion and threats of violence and was certainly eligible for asylum. Now 30 years old, but having been forced back to El Salvador, where he was abused and tortured, they argue that his petition for asylum should be considered, that the clock restarted when he re-entered the United States in DHS custody in early June. The government claims he is a member of a foreign terrorist organization making him ineligible for asylum.

Right to due process

In response to this most recent arrest, SMART General President Michael Coleman released a statement condemning the government’s actions.

“At SMART, we fight for the principle of due process every single day,” Coleman said. “We stand for the fundamental American value that all our members, and everyone in this country, are innocent until proven guilty. Let’s be very clear: Kilmar deserves his day in court. And if the government wants to send him to jail, they need to prove his guilt in court.”

Since his initial detainment and deportation in March, the union has repeatedly spoken out in Abrego García’s defense and has worked with Vasquez Sura and her legal team to press his case in the courts. SMART has also helped ensure his family is taken care of in his absence.

On April 1, after the government conceded its “error” in having deported Abrego García two weeks earlier, Coleman said, “Kilmar, our Local 100 brother … was legally authorized to live and work in this country and had fully complied with his responsibilities under the law. He did not have a criminal record and is, in fact, an example of the hard work that SMART members pride themselves on. And yet, the Trump Administration still — aware of his protected status — deported him to El Salvador, leaving his wife to discover that information from photographs in a news release.

“In his pursuit of the life promised by the American dream, Brother Kilmar was literally helping to build this great country. What did he get in return? Arrest and deportation to a nation whose prisons face outcry from human rights organizations.”

In urging its members to give to a GoFundMe account for the family, an April post by SMART read:

“Kilmar fled El Salvador after enduring threats and extortion from the violent Barrio 18 gang. These threats were so severe that a U.S. immigration judge granted him legal protection in 2019. Despite this protection, Brother Abrego García … was delivered into the hands of the very gang he fled….

“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. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.….

“Let us honor the fundamental principles of our union: solidarity, justice, and standing up for our own. We urge you to consider donating and sharing Kilmar’s story to help bring this brother home.”

Labor movement response

Other unions have also lent their voice to the defense of Abrego García.

In the lead-up to May Day, the AFL-CIO and several international unions issued statements demanding due process for Abrego García. An open letter signed by 15 nationwide unions and dozens of locals, as well as a myriad of social justice organizations, outlined the series of attacks on immigrant workers, including the deportation of Abrego García, that are the tip of the iceberg in the government attacks on the right to organize and protest.

“The labor movement holds one value above all others: solidarity,” the letter reads. “Labor demands an end to the Trump administration’s assaults on immigrant workers, freedom of speech, the right to organize and bargain, and federal government workers, their unions, and the services they provide.”

The endorsers of the open letter outlined a series of demands that can serve as a signpost for all of labor, including a call for “all unions to organize rallies, demonstrations, and other actions to demand that the administration stop these attacks and free our fellow workers. The labor movement must act to stop Trump’s deportation, censorship, and intimidation machine. When necessary, we must disrupt business as usual.”

The support Abrego García has received has been a big part of reversing his expulsion to El Salvador and slowing the government in carrying out its campaign against him. But given the magnitude of the forces lined up against him, that support stops short of what is needed to right this wrong. While the unions’ efforts to get out the truth about this case and explain the fundamental concept of worker solidarity are important, especially given the open hostility toward immigrants that gets a hearing among layers of workers and many in the middle classes, statements of solidarity and reliance on the courts alone will not stop this steamroller.

Anatomy of a frame-up

Abrego García’s case is not isolated. It is part of an escalating attack on working people, centered on the assault against immigrant workers — with masked thugs raiding workplaces and working-class neighborhoods and now a declaration of “war” against cities like Los Angeles and Chicago.

The government is determined to use Abrego García as an example for every worker who dares stand up to the authorities. The government’s case against this immigrant worker is aimed at dividing and intimidating workers and deepening the acquiescence of their unions to the rulers’ drive for greater wealth and power.

From the beginning, the government has kept up a constant drum beat of slanders and character assassination to win public support for its actions, while denying Abrego García his right to due process of law. The goal has been to dehumanize Abrego García and convince other workers that we should see him — along with every other immigrant — as a criminal and a threat to society.

Since a federal judge dismissed the Justice Department’s original justification for his arrest and deportation as bordering on “fanciful”   — alleged membership in the Salvadoran MS-13 gang — government officials have used their bully pulpit to label him a wife-beater, to claim he solicited nude photos and videos of a minor and played a role in a murder, and to paint him as a human trafficker.

The “wife-beater” slur stems from an incident of domestic violence in 2021, which was brought to the attention of the press by the White House in April 2025. That post included Vasquez Sura’s address, forcing her and the children to move into a safe house due to fear of harassment and retaliation.

Vasquez Sura, who has been an outspoken advocate for Abrego García, explained to the press that the 2021 incident occurred when she and her husband had an argument while in their car. He became angry and struck her, leaving her with a bruise, a scratch above her eye, and a ripped shirt.

“After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution following a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order, in case things escalated,” she said in a statement shared by her attorney. “Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through the situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling.”

“Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father, and I will continue to stand by him and demand justice for him. Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed,” she stated.

“No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect,” said Vasquez Sura. “But that is not a justification for ICE’s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from removal.”

An April 24 statement by the Alliance for Immigrant Survivors (AIS), which defends immigrant survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking, slammed the government attempt to use “the exploitation of their [survivors’] families and private lives to serve political goals.”

“Let us be clear: Our movement does not advocate for the erosion of due process or the mass expulsion of immigrants as a solution to violence against women in this country. This is not what makes communities safer,” the AIS statement read.

“Attempts to traumatize and intimidate survivors, and turn their experiences into political theater are unacceptable and damaging — both to the families involved and the larger goal of ending gender-based violence. It does not demonstrate a serious commitment to ending violence against women.

“Politicizing their pain … makes survivors far less likely to come forward to report crime and get help,” AIS noted.

The “human trafficking” slander is a distortion of the May 12 charges the government filed in Tennessee, which allege Abrego García was guilty of knowingly transporting “aliens [who were] in the United States in violation of the law.” The “evidence,” which the government has widely broadcast, stems from a 2022 traffic stop and charges of smuggling surfaced only after the government came under pressure to correct the “error” used to justify his deportation.

According to the DHS report on the incident, with Abrego García in his car were eight other men. Abrego García stated that they were driving from Houston to Maryland for construction work. The highway patrol officer took the names of the passengers, but could not read the writing and did not pursue the matter further since no citation was issued. Abrego García was given a warning for driving with an expired license.

The actions cited — even if the men traveling with Abrego García were undocumented immigrants — are a far cry from “trafficking,” which is a crime against human beings involving the use of coercion with the intent of exploitation. In fact, if the charges in the indictment are true, the worst Abrego García can be accused of is assisting men who may very well have found themselves in situations similar to his, men just looking for a way to support themselves and their families, men who may have fled violence and persecution in their home countries. How many of us have skirted the law for less noble reasons — hiring someone who may be undocumented to do yardwork or to help clean the house; driving home after just slightly too much alcohol; trying to twist our finances to fit into a tax loophole here or there?

The government’s tactics will be familiar to any worker who has found themselves in trouble on the job or in the legal system. Innocent or guilty, whether or not someone has made some mistake, the bosses and their government use the same methods — exaggeration, distortion, and downright lies — to ensure they win their case, no matter how thin or fabricated the evidence may be.

“We all need to imagine if this were to happen to us,” SMART president Coleman pointed out. “Taken into custody, illegally deported and not being able to reach out to your loved ones.”

Anyone of us could end up in this kind of frame up even if our only “crime” is standing our ground.

The recent shameful Supreme Court decision removing any restrictions on racial and economic profiling by ICE is interlinked with the government’s efforts to frame up and deport Abrego García.

It’s not often that World-Outlook cites the words of a Supreme Court justice but they are fully accurate — and chilling — in this case.

Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three justices who dissented, wrote that the court’s September 8 ruling means the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution may no longer protect the rights of people “who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little. Because this is unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees, I dissent.”

Motion to “gag” Noem, Bondi

Given the slander campaign and the efforts to whip up racist and anti-immigrant sentiment against him, Kilmar Abrego García has requested that the courts instruct DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, as well as other government representatives, to refrain from extrajudicial commentary on his case. The motion notes that the slander campaign against him will make it much harder for this immigrant worker to receive a fair and impartial trial.

While political office certainly does not nullify someone’s right to free speech, there are rules governing the conduct of individuals involved in legal proceedings aimed at protecting the integrity of the process and the rights of the defendant, rules that government officials and their backers in the big-business media have completely ignored in this case.

Even U.S. president Donald Trump has weighed in to tar and feather Abrego García. “He beat the hell out of his wife,” Trump told reporters on August 25. “His wife is afraid to even talk about him — she’s been mauled by this animal.” A week earlier, the president posted on his X account a supposed photo of Abrego García’s tattooed hand with the markings “MS13” clearly added to the original. And on August 25, the White House “X” account displayed a graphic with “MS 13” emblazoned on Abrego García’s chest.

This demonizing of Abrego García is designed to play on the fears that many workers feel in a world where their future seems on shaky ground. It is only through fighting for the rights of every worker — wherever they are from — and uniting in action that we have a chance of countering the assault underway.

Every worker has a right to defend themselves from criminal charges and has a right to live, to work, to care for their family. The threat of deportation that hangs over the heads of millions of U.S. workers, and the mass expulsions already under way, weaken our class and strengthen the employers.

Abrego García’s case should be a lightning rod for unity and at the forefront of the battles to come.

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