There seems to be no light at the end of the Tunnel for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, as after spending almost three months in detention in El Salvador,
he came back to the US not a free man but a detainee in federal custody facing charges for human smuggling in Tennessee. But now the US government is planning to deport him to Uganda, of all places, a country to which he has no ties of any kind.
This is being done because he refused to take a plea deal on the human smuggling case he has been charged with. If he accepts the deal, he would be deported to Costa Rica instead of Uganda, but Garcia, who has lived in the US for almost 14 years and is married to a US citizen, refused to take the plea deal. Now his lawyers argue that the government is acting vindictively and he is being punished and threatened for not taking a deal by sending him to a country to which he has no connection at all.
Garcia, who has been released from jail for now, has been ordered by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to report to Baltimore or face deportation to Uganda under a recent U.S.–Uganda asylum agreement. If deported to Uganda, this won’t be a one-off incident, as before, migrants from Vietnam, Mexico, Cuba, and others have been deported to countries like South Sudan and Eswatini.
