Wife of wrongfully deported Maryland father to 5-year-old son with disabilities speaks out for first time
The wife of a Salvadoran man Donald Trump’s administration admits was mistakenly deported to that country’s notorious prison says she is “very scared” for her husband’s safety.
“I’ve seen news of that prison, and I know they take criminals there. And my husband’s not a criminal,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura told CBS News.
Her husband Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador on March 15, joining dozens of mostly Venezuelan immigrants on removal flights after Donald Trump secretly invoked the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport alleged Tren de Aragua gang members.
Two of the planes were sent to El Salvador under that wartime authority, and a third plane was supposed to only be carrying immigrants with court orders for their removal. Abrego Garcia was on that plane — something administration officials have called an “oversight.”
In 2019, a judge had blocked Abrego Garcia’s removal after credible testimony that he fears violence and death in his home country, which he fled in 2011 when he was 16 years old. Under that order, he is allowed to remain in the United States legally, and must attend regular check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His most recent appearance was in January, according to court documents.
He has no criminal record in either the United States or El Salvador, according to his attorney. He has been living in Maryland with his wife and five-year-old child, both U.S. citizens, and helping raise two children from a previous relationship.
Their five-year-old son is autistic and nonverbal.
Abrego Garcia was working five days a week as a sheet metal worker while also attending college classes, Sura told CBS News.
On March 12, three days before he was sent to El Salvador’s prison, ICE officials told her that his legal status “changed” and that he would be fingerprinted and detained, she said.
After he was shuffled around to different detention centers, he told her that if she didn’t receive another call from him, she should assume he had been deported.
“He never called,” she told CBS News. “I waited and waited. He never made that call.”
She later identified him in a photograph from inside El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center shared by the Salvadoran government; masked officers were filmed dragging men in shackles into the prison.
“When I saw it, I immediately broke down ‘cause I knew it was him,” she said. “I was scared for his life.”
Following news of the government’s admission in court filings, Vice President JD Vance falsely labeled Abrego Garcia a “convicted gang member.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt admitted there was a “clerical error” in his case, but claimed, without providing evidence, that Garcia was a “leader” of the MS-13 gang, and “involved in human trafficking.”
