Kilmar Abrego Garcia seeks asylum in US to prevent deportation to Uganda

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has become the face of US President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, wants to seek asylum in the United States, his lawyers told a federal judge on Wednesday.

Abrego Garcia, 30, was detained on Monday in Baltimore by US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) after leaving a Tennessee jail on Friday. The Trump administration said it intends to deport him to the African country of Uganda.

Administration officials have said he is part of the dangerous MS-13 gang, an allegation Abrego Garcia denies.

The Salvadorean national’s lawyers are fighting the deportation efforts in court, arguing he has the right to express fear of persecution and torture in Uganda. Abrego Garcia has also told immigration authorities he would prefer to be sent to Costa Rica if he must be removed from the US.

A US immigration judge denied his request for asylum in 2019 because he applied more than a year after he had fled to the US He left El Salvador at the age of 16, around 2011, to join his brother, who had become a US citizen, in Maryland.

Although he was denied asylum, the immigration judge did issue an order shielding Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he faced credible threats of violence from a gang there that had terrorised him and his family.