Abrego Garcia Now Facing Shifting Threats of Deportation

The Trump administration warned in immigration court on Thursday that if Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s recent attempt to open an asylum case in the United States is successful, government officials will seek to deport him back to El Salvador, according to a copy of the court filing obtained by The New York Times.

The filing indicates the administration is opening another front in its efforts to expel Mr. Abrego Garcia from the United States for a second time — this time back to his homeland, where a court already ruled that he cannot be sent because he could face threats or persecution there.

Trump administration officials have repeatedly maintained that they will not allow Mr. Abrego Garcia to go free in the United States. And last month, after he was released from custody in the separate criminal case he is facing and then quickly rearrested, they originally said they were considering expelling him to Uganda.

But in a filing in immigration court in Baltimore linked to his asylum request, Trump administration officials raised the idea that sending him back to El Salvador was also an option. They said that opening an asylum case would essentially nullify the earlier ruling that he could not be sent back to his home country.

“Should the Immigration Court grant the respondent’s motion to reopen, D.H.S. will pursue the respondent’s removal to El Salvador,” the Trump administration argued in its filing. It said the earlier ruling “will no longer be valid” if the asylum case moves forward.

The asylum request, which was filed in late August, was the latest twist in the legal cases surrounding Mr. Abrego Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who was deported in March to a notorious terrorism prison in El Salvador because of an administrative error. That removal, officials eventually acknowledged, violated a court ruling issued in 2019 that had expressly barred his being sent to the country where he feared his life could be in danger.