BALTIMORE — The Trump administration now plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia, according to court documents.
The West African nation of Liberia has agreed to accept Abrego Garcia, the DOJ officials said, and the Department of Homeland Security is aiming for a removal date as early as Oct. 31.
“Although [Abrego Garcia] has identified more than twenty countries that he purports to fear would persecute or torture him if he were removed there, Liberia is not on that list,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “Liberia is a thriving democracy and one of the United States’s closest partners on the African continent.”
WATCH: The latest on Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Garcia has been held by ICE since being released from a federal prison in Tennessee for pending human smuggling charges.
A federal judge there ordered his pre-trial release, and has allowed Garcia's attorneys to pursue whether his prosecution was politically targeted.
Meanwhile, an immigration judge recently refused to reopen Garcia's asylum claim, clearing the way for the feds to deport him.
Garcia's defense team said their client was offered deportation to Costa Rica, where the country agreed to provide amnesty, but the U.S. said they would only allow that if he pleaded guilty to the federal charges in Tennessee.
When Garcia refused that offer, the U.S. threatened to send him to various African countries, including Uganda or Eswatini, both of whom have refused to accept Garcia.
"Having struck out with Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana, ICE now seeks to deport our client Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia – a country with which he has no connection, thousands of miles from his family and home in Maryland. Costa Rica has agreed to accept him as a refugee, and remains a viable and lawful option. Instead, the government has chosen yet another path that feels designed to inflict maximum hardship. Their actions are punitive, cruel and unconstitutional,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
One place Garcia cannot be sent to is his native country of El Salvador, because that's what prompted this whole case to begin with.
Back in March the U.S. deported Garcia to El Salvador where he was temporarily held in a maximum security prison despite a 2019 immigration court's order prohibiting it, due to potential safety concerns.
Courts ordered Garcia to be returned to the U.S., however, the feds balked until they were able to build a case and file charges.
Since then, Garcia's been in and out of federal custody at different facilities while officials decide where they can send him.
Judge Paula Xinis, overseeing Abrego Garcia’s case in Maryland, has barred his removal while he’s awaiting trial in the Tennessee case. She had not yet weighed in on the DOJ’s new proposal to remove him to Liberia as of Friday afternoon.
Garcia continues to deny any wrongdoing.
