(Washington) An American judge said on Sunday that she was going to order the administration of Donald Trump to release a Salvadoran expelled by mistake to his country in March and recently renewed in the United States to be tried.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, is at the heart of a controversy since his expulsion to a high security prison in Salvador with more than 200 other migrants presented as members of South American gangs classified “terrorists”.
His case has become a symbol of the opposition between federal justice and the government of Donald Trump on the issue of massive evictions. The new American administration has made the fight, sometimes muscular, against illegal immigration one of its priorities.
Upon his return to the United States in June, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested and charged in Nashville, Tennessee, for traffic by clandestine migrants. He pleaded not guilty.
The accusation requested that he remains in pre -trial detention pending his trial, but judge Barbara Holmes took a contrary position.
“The government claims that Greo is a longtime and well-known member of MS-13,” a Salvado -ian gang, the judge said on Sunday in his written decision. “But Abrego has no judicial history (…) and his membership presumed to a gang is contradicted by the very evidence presented by the government”.
“Overall,” she continued, “the elements arguing for her release weigh more than those in favor of maintaining detention”.
The judge, however, explained that even if she ordered her release on Wednesday, Kilmar Abrego Garcia Wednesday would probably be immediately arrested by immigration police.
This Salvadoran married to an American has in fact has no legal immigration status on American territory.
However, he cannot be expelled to his country because US justice definitively canceled an expulsion decree in 2019 against him, on the grounds that he runs too much risks if he is returned to Salvador.
After its expulsion in March, the government had recognized an “administrative error” but refused to have it renewed in the United States, as required by American justice, before making a machine to charge it for other reasons.
