Alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s prison complex, was accused in the past of beating his wife.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, petitioned for an order of protection against him in May 2021, according to Maryland court documents. She also filed for an order in 2020. Now, however, she’s petitioning for Abrego Garcia’s swift return to the United States from the Terrorism Confinement Center, a facility in El Salvador known for its brutality.
Vasquez Sura claimed he punched, scratched, grabbed, and bruised her, according to court documents. The two domestic violence cases she filed against him contradict the rosy picture some media outlets have painted of Abrego Garcia as a Maryland family man following his forced removal to El Salvador.
Garcia first crossed paths with the authorities in 2019 when he was spotted loitering in front of a Maryland Home Depot with three other men who were identified by police as high-ranking MS-13 members.
Police handed Garcia over to ICE for deportation, but he was granted a “withholding of removal” by an immigration judge based on his claim that he would be persecuted by the Barrio 18 gang if he were returned to El Salvador.
Garcia was deported to El Salvador in violation of the immigration judge’s order due to what the Department of Justice admitted in a Monday court filing was an “administrative error.” Under the judge’s order, Garcia could technically have been deported to another country, just not El Salvador.
In protest of the Trump administration’s move, some Senate Democrats are allegedly planning PR trips to El Salvador, where they intend to lobby for Abrego Garcia’s return home. They argue that there is a lack of evidence that Abrego Garcia was a member of a violent gang, which has been used as part of the justification for his deportation.
“I’m about to board my flight to El Salvador, where I hope to meet with senior government officials to discuss the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen wrote on X Wednesday. “I also hope to see Kilmar and check on his condition — and remind him that we won’t stop fighting until he’s home.”
Van Hollen said he would meet with the U.S. embassy in El Salvador to help secure the release of Abrego Garcia, who he said was “illegally abducted.” The senator called Abrego Garcia his “constituent.” Democrats have been accused of showing far more enthusiasm for justice for Abrego Garcia, a non-citizen whose criminal history is disputed, than they did for Laken Riley, who was murdered by an illegal alien. Democratic lawmakers refused to stand to honor her grieving family during President Trump’s joint address to Congress.
Over $160,000 has been raised in a GoFundMe for Abrego Garcia’s wife and kids in the United States.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a history of violence and was not the upstanding ‘Maryland Man’ the media has portrayed him as,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X Wednesday. “According to court filings, Garcia’s wife sought a domestic violence restraining order against him, claiming he punched, scratched, and ripped off her shirt, among other harm. This MS-13 gang member is not a sympathetic figure.”