PERSON: Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was born in the Los Nogales neighborhood of San Salvador, El Salvador, in July 1995. In El Salvador, the Barrio 18 criminal gang extorted his mother’s pupusa (a street food) business for money and threatened that if she did not pay the money, they would force her eldest son, Cesar, to join the gang; the gang later threatened to kill him. As a result, the family paid the money and hid Cesar, eventually sending him to the United States. Barrio 18 then turned its attention to Kilmar, who was around 12 years old. The gang followed Kilmar and continued to threaten his family. Eventually, when Kilmar was 16 years old, his family sent him to the US as well. Court documents indicate that around 2011 or 2012, he illegally crossed the Mexico–US border near McAllen, Texas. In other court documents, the government stated that he entered the US “at or near an unknown place on or about an unknown date”.

From the US border, Abrego Garcia traveled to Maryland in order to live with his brother Cesar, who became a US citizen. In 2016, Abrego Garcia met Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a US citizen, and they later married. After marrying, the couple had one child, whom they raised alongside Vasquez Sura’s two children from an earlier relationship. All three children have special needs; the son born to the couple has autism and a hearing defect, and is “unable to communicate verbally”. Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland with his family, and at the time of his deportation had not been charged with or convicted of any criminal offense, including gang membership, in the US or El Salvador.

>> Wikipedia