As the Trump administration employees seek to defend their refusal to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States after being deported to “mistake”, one of the major justifications of the government is that he was a member of the MS-13 gang. A Trump employee has filed the charge after another, although Abrego Garcia denies this and the evidence of him is obviously thin.
This concept – that Abrego Garcia is a great threat to public safety in the United States – became Trumpworld, that he denied him a major proper process and left him in prison for maximum security in El Salvador, known for human rights violations. This includes an apparent opposition to the Supreme Court’s recent order to “facilitate” his return: On Monday, when a reporter asked Trump if he would follow this directive, Trump said: “Why just don’t say,” Isn’t it wonderful that we keep the criminals outside our country? “
But the administration’s case that Abrego Garcia is a member of the gang and the violent criminal is more problems.
A Maryland police officer who officially testifies to the alleged affiliation of Abrego Garcia’s gang in 2019 – when he was first detained – he was subsequently suspended by the power for a serious crime: providing confidential information about a sexual worker, The new republic has established.
This officer – approximately a senior detective in the case of Abrego Garcia in 2019 – was called Ivan Mendes, according to information provided by the Abgo Garcia lawyer at that time, Lucia Couriel, who was also a member of her current legal team. Subsequently, Mendes was accused of this crime, admitted guilty and received probation.
By itself, this, this is not settled in whether the acre Garcia was once in the MS-13. But this reinforces the argument that the process that marks him a member of the gang was cheeky and dismissed with shortcomings from the beginning. Abrego Garcia and his lawyers claim that both the local law enforcement agencies and the Trump administration rushed to squeeze this belonging to him on the basis of evidence that was thin as non -existent, and the suspension of this officer for such a serious crime makes this case more right.
These new details also help to illuminate some of the prolonged unknowns for all this saga.
Abrego Garcia – Salvadoran, who came to the United States illegally in 2011, at the age of 16 – was originally detained in Prince George County, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, Colombia County, in March 2019. The district police asked him if he was a member of the band.
Abrego Garcia has not been charged with a crime and, based on its undocumented status, has been transferred to immigration and the application of customs who have moved to deport it. Abrego Garcia has sought asylum and during these production ICE claims that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.
To support this claim, Ice relies on what is known as a gang interview list provided by Police of Prince George County. He claims that Abreo Garcia was wearing a hat and hood on Chicago Bulls, that it was evidence of MS-13 membership and that a “confidential source” had linked that he was a member of the “click of the band”. But it works in New York, where he has never lived.
In the 2019 proceedings, an immigration judge eventually provided the abbro Garcia “withholding of removal”, which transferred his transfer to Salvador on the grounds that he would encounter harm there. This is the status that the Trump administration deliberately ignores by deporting it to that country in March, which the Supreme Court has now declared “illegal”. (Administration claims that there is no obligation to return it, a case that breaks down under control.)
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys told some of this story for 2019 in the current court documents, but they also added some details that raise further questions. They claimed that at that time his lawyer Couriel had sought more information from PG police, but was informed that the lead detective in his case had been “stopped”. Current submission does not name the officer and they do not say Why He was stopped.
But we can fill the facts about some of these encryptive details.
Ivan Mendes was the officer who completed this gang interview list, according to a copy of the sheet we received from Courie. And Couriel tells us that repeated conversations with the General Inspector of the PG County confirmed that Mendes is a leading detective in the case of Abrego Garcia.
Moreover, it turns out that Mendes was stopped in early April 2019 for “providing information to a commercial sex worker who paid in exchange for sexual acts.” This is according to a PG district statement of his accusation, which came a year later, in June 2020, the information that Mendes shared is related to a “continuing police investigation”.
“This is obviously not an officer who follows the rules and protocols,” Courie told us. “If he is willing to do this, what else is ready to do?”
Mendes eventually pleaded guilty to the prosecution and received probation as per the service of Aisha Bravoy, Prince George’s state lawyer. The Service also confirmed the Mendes Police ID, which corresponds to the gang list. PG County Police Filed Comment but Department seemed to have acted of this violation effectively.
All this raises more questions about the integrity of the process by which Abgo Garcia is considered a member of the gang, even Trump and his servants were an extremely cavalier when throwing the MS-13 smear.
Vice President JD Vance, for example, firm This abree Garcia was a “convicted member of the MS-13 gang”. The basis for this is that during the 2019 court dispute, Abango Garcia was refused on a bail at an early stage. But as Roger Parloff describes in detail, this is a very weak proof. Abrego Garcia was not even charged, let alone convicted any crime related to gang membership or for some crime.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Caroline Levitus insists that there is a “lot of evidence” for Abrego Garcia’s MS-13 membership and even claims to have participated in human trafficking. Trump’s best advisor Stephen Miller and internal security secretary Christie Nov also repeated these accusations.
But not only the existing evidence of this crime is extremely thin; We have now learned that the employee who attested him was suspended very soon after that serious professional violations, which suggests that the whole process may have been even more inspired than he was known before.
Abrego Garcia looked like To set up in his life in MarylandS He is married to a US citizen and has three children, including one with autism, and he worked as a sheet metal worker and conducts lessons at the University of Maryland.
But It we carries, emphasizing that even if Real evidence of abrego Garcia’s crime had to appear, its removal is still illegal and he is still They are entitled to a proper process in the United States. If the administration wanted to deport it, it could have Just installing another legal challenge to his status “Removal” or seeks to deport it to a country other than El Salvador, which this status does not exclude. Administration There is still an option Return it and repeat it again for removal through these conventional legal channels.
Why employees refuse to do this remains unanswered. And now that more doubt has been placed on the procedures by which Abrego Garcia was set as a gang in the first place, the whole affair seems even more sore and uncertain.