Trump Administration Live Updates: Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is Arrested and Will Be Re-Deported, Noem Says
Where Things Stand
Immigration case: Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March and brought back to face criminal charges, was arrested again on Monday after the administration indicated that it planned to deport him to Uganda. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Mr. Garcia, who had been freed from custody in the federal case three days ago, was being processed for deportation but did not say to where. Read more ›
National Guard: Some National Guard troops deployed as part of President Trump’s crackdown in Washington, D.C., began carrying weapons on Sunday evening after an authorization by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. A spokesman for the Guard task force said that service members would operate under established rules for the use of force, employing it “only as a last resort.”
First meeting: President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea will meet Mr. Trump for the first time on Monday in Washington, as their countries’ decades-old alliance comes under strain because of the United States’ increasing focus on China. Read more ›
Trump gave a very discursive description of his efforts to stop fighting between nations, referring to Africa, then said he loves “Black people,” and that he did well with Black voters.
Trump then says angrily that people call him racist.
Trump says he wants the Defense Department’s name to be changed back to the “Department of War.”
Stephen Miller makes the rather eyebrow-raising claim that people had broadly stopped wearing watches and jewelry in Washington out of fear of crime and now have started to wear them again thanks to Trump’s crackdown.
“They’re evil people, and they’re gonna be brought down, they have to be brought down, because they hurt our country,” Trump says of Biden advisers and people around the former president whom he doesn’t name.
He also falsely claimed that under Biden, “nobody” wanted to sign up to be a firefighter or police officer or serve in the military.
“You burn a flag you get one year in jail,” Trump says of an executive order he’s planning to sign. The Supreme Court has already said in a 1989 ruling that flag-burning is protected speech.
Trump’s focus on local crime and cleanliness and homelessness underscores how much of his understanding of executive power is based in his time in New York dealing with local politicians as he tried to develop projects.
President Trump just celebrated 11 days without a homicide in Washington, a trend he attributes to his law enforcement crackdown. But he falsely claims such a streak hasn’t happened in “years.”
The capital has already had several weeks this year without a homicide, including a stretch in late February and early March in which the city did not experience a homicide for more than two weeks, according to police statistics.
“I don’t like a dictator, I’m not a dictator,” Trump, whose authoritarian practices have been intensifying, tells reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump pushed his opinion on abortion rights off to the states, saying that that was where such decisions should be made. Yet on a number of other issues, he has decided states aren’t capable of making their own decisions.
The president has displayed soccer’s World Cup trophy on a table next to his desk in the Oval Office, days after he asked the president of the sport’s global governing body -- who had brought it for an event -- if he could keep it. Questions have been raised about the common refrain that the World Cup trophy is “solid gold,” a statement Trump echoed just now that has been made for many years, because its weight, according to some experts, is too light to be entirely gold.
Trump has started talking to reporters in the Oval Office, where he’s expected to sign an executive action related to no-cash bail.
He is opposed to cashless bail, and has been a major critic of it in the cities where it takes place.
President Trump cast doubt on the potential for progress in his meeting President Lee Jae Myung South Korea at the White House today, posting on social media that political developments in South Korea might sap his interest on making trade and defense deals.
“WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA?” Trump wrote. “Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there.”
On Sunday, Korean prosecutors filed an arrest warrant for the former prime minister Han Duck-Soo, whom they accused of trying to help the country’s former president, Yoon Suk Yeol, to impose martial law after he was impeached. Yoon has been arrested twice in the last year on various charges related to his ill-fated bid to stay in power.
Abrego Garcia should have a grace period of two business days from being deported again under a standing order issued in May by the chief federal judge in Maryland. The order automatically stopped the government from following through on expulsions of immigrants for 48 hours after they filed habeas petitions.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed such a motion in Federal District Court in Maryland on Monday morning, seeking to stop his removal to Uganda. The petition claimed that the Trump administration had re-arrested him without first giving him the opportunity to express “fears of persecution and torture in that country.”
Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, said in a statement that immigration police were “processing” Kilmar Abrego Garcia for deportation. She did not say where they planned on deporting him and vilified the Maryland man with a series of unproven claims.
Abrego Garcia has expressed willingness to leave the United States to accept refugee status in Costa Rica, his lawyer said. He added that the Trump administration had previously dangled a plea deal to deport Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica. His lawyers have said that if he didn’t take that deal, the Trump administration would try to deport him to Uganda, an East African country where his native Spanish is not widely spoken.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in March and then brought back to face criminal charges, was detained again on Monday after the administration indicated that it planned to re-deport him to Uganda, his lawyer said.
The detention unfolded after Mr. Abrego Garcia arrived at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore and came only three days after he was freed from custody in the criminal case that was filed against him in Federal District Court in Nashville.
Outside the office, a lawyer for Mr. Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said that the stated intention of the meeting with ICE was for an interview. “Clearly, that was false,” he said, adding that the immigration authorities did not say why Mr. Abrego Garcia was being detained or even where he would be taken.
The crowd of supporters descended into chants of “boos” and “shame” to the news, and immigrant rights volunteers in yellow vests shielded Mr. Abrego Garcia’s family members as they left the building.
Shortly after, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed a legal action known as a habeas petition in Federal District Court in Maryland seeking to stop his removal to Uganda. The petition claimed that the Trump administration had re-arrested him without first giving him the opportunity to express “fears of persecution and torture in that country.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia should have a grace period of two business days from being deported again under a standing order issued in May by the chief federal judge in Maryland. The order automatically stopped the government from following through on expulsions of immigrants for 48 hours after they filed habeas petitions.
Over the weekend, his lawyers had accused the Trump administration of seeking to “coerce” a guilty plea from him on the charges of human smuggling that were brought against him in an indictment in June.
The lawyers said the administration had promised to send Mr. Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, where he could live freely as a legal resident, if he pleaded to the charges and agreed to serve whatever prison sentence he eventually received. Otherwise, the lawyers said, Trump officials said they would deport Mr. Abrego Garcia “halfway across the world” to Uganda, where, the lawyers said, “his safety and liberty would be under threat.”
“The government now seeks to deport Mr. Abrego to Uganda as punishment, notwithstanding that Costa Rica is willing to take him in as a refugee,” one of the lawyers, Sean Hecker, said after the detention. “The government’s campaign of retribution continues because Mr. Abrego refuses to be coerced into pleading guilty to a case that should never have been brought.”
The arrest in Baltimore was the latest twist in a long-running saga that began this spring, when the Trump administration removed Mr. Abrego Garcia to a notorious terrorism prison in El Salvador, despite a court order that expressly barred him from being sent to the country. Then, after weeks of complaining that they were powerless to bring him back to U.S. soil, Trump officials did exactly that — not merely to correct their own mistake but to file criminal charges against him.
As he arrived for his immigration check-in, Mr. Abrego Garcia was greeted by the cheers of dozens of supporters. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and his brother, Cesar, were by his side. Speaking to the crowd, he thanked the people who had stood with him and delivered an emotional plea to immigrants and the immigrant rights community to keep up the fight and not lose hope.
“Brothers and sisters, my name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” he said. “And I always want you to remember that today, I can say with pride, that I am free and have been reunited with my family.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a black, gray and white polo, appeared nervous when he first arrived. His eyes shifted from reporters to rally goers, and he took a deep breath. His voice broke as he spoke about how the memories of his family and playing with his children on a trampoline had sustained him while he was detained at the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
But he held back his tears and finished his statement with resolve. He said those moments would continue to fuel him as he continued his legal battles and reminded the audience that his case was not about one immigrant family but the many targeted under the Trump administration’s crackdown.
“To all of the families who have also suffered separations or who live under the constant threat of being separated,” he said, “I want to tell you that even though this injustice is hurting us hard, we must not lose hope.”
He continued: “God is with us, and God will never leave us. God will bring justice to all of the injustice.”
As he climbed the steps to the federal building, with immigration agents around, the scene turned chaotic. Mr. Abrego Garcia bowed his head as he slowly walked into the building. The crowd chanted “ICE go home” and “Si se puede,” or “yes you can” in Spanish.
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