The Trump administration released documents Wednesday that revealed new details in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man deported to El Salvador a month ago in what a government lawyer called an “administrative error.”
The documents were released after weeks of pressure on the government to prove its contention that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. The Trump administration sent him to a notorious megaprison in the Central American country as part of its promised deportation program of alleged criminals.
The Justice Department shared records, not previously made public, detailing how police officers in Maryland assessed Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang during an arrest in 2019. He had no criminal history at the time, which the documents also state, and his attorneys have denied that he is a gang member.
In a document titled “gang field interview sheet,” the Prince George’s County Police Department detailed how in March 2019 it approached Abrego Garcia along with three other people for loitering at a Home Depot parking lot in Hyattsville. Abrego Garcia said in a court filing that he was there looking for day labor work.
Police said he was wearing “a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents” on the bills.
The officers said such insignia — indicating “ver, oir, y callar” or “see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil” — was “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture.” The officers said they consulted with a reliable confidential source, who “advised that [Abrego Garcia] is the rank of ‘Chequeo’ with the moniker of ‘Chele’” in the gang.
Abrego Garcia was handed over to immigration authorities, and he wound his way through the legal process. Later in 2019, an immigration judge barred him from being sent to El Salvador. The order said he proved he had a “well-founded fear of future persecution” from local gangs, and he was granted a withholding of removal to the country, which allowed him to stay in the United States temporarily and receive a work permit.
Years later, in 2025, immigration agents stopped Abrego Garcia in an Ikea parking lot. He was deported to El Salvador days later, on March 15.
The Supreme Court ruled last week that the government must “facilitate” his release from the prison. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said in a meeting at the White House this week that he would not release Abrego Garcia.
"Mr. Abrego Garcia has never been convicted of a crime. If the government believes there is a legitimate case to be made, it should present that case in a court of law and have a judge review and decide his fate—not on social media," his lawyers said in a statement. "We look forward to the government complying with the Court’s order and facilitating Mr. Abrego Garcia’s immediate release from custody in El Salvador. We will continue to fight for our client’s safe return and to ensure his constitutional rights are fully restored."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement Wednesday, “We hear far too much in the mainstream media about sob stories of gang members and criminal illegals and not enough about their victims.”
Police determined during the 2019 arrest that two other people who were with Abrego Garcia in the Home Depot parking lot were gang members, citing one man’s criminal history and another man’s tattoos, as well as information from an unidentified person who was a “past proven and reliable source of information.”
The documents said that the four men said they were citizens of El Salvador and were “present in the United States illegally” and that they did not have immigration documents on them.
Another document released Wednesday, from the Department of Homeland Security in 2019, said police identified two men, one of whom was Abrego Garcia, as being having been previously detained in a murder investigation. Abrego Garcia denied being connected to a murder investigation, the documents say, and he was never charged.
A page of the document includes a contradiction — at one point it says Abrego Garcia did not claim a fear of returning to his country, but later it says he did claim fear of returning to El Salvador.
The document said Abrego Garcia claimed he had presented sufficient evidence to refute the gang allegation, including character references and his lack of criminal record, minus traffic offenses.
In another document from the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, a court agreed to deny Abrego Garcia bond after his arrest outside the Home Depot in 2019 and wrote that the allegation that he is a gang member “appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record” in the Prince George’s County police documents.
“The reason for the Respondent’s arrest given on his Form 1-213 does appear at odds with the Gang Field Interview Sheet, which states that the Respondent was approached because he and others were loitering outside of Home Depot,” the document said, but it added that it still found the allegations of his gang membership to be supported.
Abrego Garcia responded that “there is no reliable evidence in the record to support” that he is a member of MS-13 and that the allegation “is based on hearsay relayed by a confidential source.”
Aside from the new documents, the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media earlier Wednesday that Abrego Garcia’s wife had sought a temporary protective order against him in 2021. The case was ultimately dismissed. Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, has been a strong, vocal supporter of her husband and has fought for his return.
“After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order in case things escalated,” Vasquez Sura said in a statement Wednesday. “Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process.
“No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. That is not a justification for ICE’s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation,” she added.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers and an appeals court judge continue to litigate the Supreme Court’s instruction that the government facilitate his release.
The Trump administration Wednesday afternoon filed an appeal of U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’ order last Thursday to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in which she directed the Trump administration to “take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible.”
Xinis questioned the evidence an immigration judge used to determine that Abrego Garcia is a gang member. She said in a ruling that he has no criminal record in the United States or El Salvador and that the “‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted only of his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived.”
Xinis said Tuesday that she was considering contempt proceedings against the Trump administration.
She had ordered the government to supply evidence of efforts it has taken to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release, and on Tuesday she criticized the government’s lack of response.
“I’ve gotten nothing,” Xinis said. “I’ve gotten no real response and no real legal justification for not answering.”
In a court-ordered daily status update, DHS general counsel Joseph Mazzara wrote, “Given the government’s prior clear and unequivocal notice to the court regarding how the government will facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return within the counters of existing law and regulation, there are no further updates.”
