Kilmer Abrego Garcia’s lawyers accuse Trump administration of seeking to ‘coerce’ plea with Uganda threat
Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in March and then returned in June, accused the Trump administration Saturday of trying to “coerce” him to plead guilty in his criminal case by threatening to redeport him to Uganda.
In a seven-page filing in U.S. District Court in Nashville, Tennessee, the lawyers said that Thursday evening, one day before Abrego Garcia was set to be released from criminal custody, federal prosecutors offered him a deal.
The prosecutors said that if he agreed to remain in jail until Monday and then pleaded guilty to charges of having taken part in a long-running conspiracy to smuggle immigrants lacking legal status across the United States, they would agree to deport him to Costa Rica after he served whatever sentence he was given in the case.
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As a further inducement to enter a guilty plea, according to the filing, the prosecutors provided the defence lawyers with a letter confirming that Abrego Garcia could live freely in Costa Rica, which would “accept him as a refugee or grant him residency status.”
The lawyers said they ultimately rejected the proposal to keep Abrego Garcia locked up through the weekend but promised to convey the government’s offer of a plea bargain to their client.
But after Abrego Garcia was freed from custody in Tennessee on Friday afternoon, they said, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security informed the lawyers that if Abrego Garcia did not accept the offer to plead guilty and be sent to Costa Rica by Monday morning, then Immigration and Customs Enforcement would start the process of expelling him to Uganda.
“There can be only one interpretation of these events,” the lawyers wrote.
“The DOJ, DHS, and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Abrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat.”
The lawyers previously had filed a motion last week accusing the Trump administration of vindictively filing an indictment against Abrego Garcia simply because he dared to fight deportation.
The filing Saturday in Nashville was styled as a supplement to that motion, which Abrego Garcia’s lawyers submitted to Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., who is hearing the criminal case. As part of the motion, the lawyers asked Crenshaw to throw the entire case out.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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Originally published on The New York Times
