Kilmar Abrego Garcia Was ‘Tortured’ in El Salvador Prison, Lawyers Say

Kilmar Abrego Garcia described a harrowing account of his detainment during the nearly three months he was wrongfully imprisoned in El Salvador thanks to Donald Trump’s administration, claiming he was beaten, deprived of sleep, and psychologically tortured.

According to court papers filed by his lawyers on Wednesday, upon his arrival at El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, a prison official told detainees: “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.” Abrego Garcia was then allegedly forced to strip, struck in the legs, head, and arms to make him change faster, then was frog-marched to a cell while being hit with wooden batons along the way.

The filing in Maryland district court claims that Abrego Garcia and 20 other Salvadorans in his cell were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., with guards striking anyone who collapsed from exhaustion. “During this time, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself,” read the filing. “The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.”

During his first two weeks at CECOT, his lawyers said that he lost 31 pounds.

Abrego Garcia’s legal team also claimed that he and four others were moved in April “to a different module in CECOT, where they were photographed with mattresses and better food — photos that appeared to be staged to document improved conditions.”

Abrego Garcia was among hundreds of immigrants whom the administration shipped to El Salvador without due process back in March, in defiance of a court order. However, he had previously been granted a “protection of removal” order barring his deportation to El Salvador — and his deportation was found to be “illegal” by the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration for almost two months publicly refused to comply with the Supreme Court’s directive — as well as those from Maryland District Court Judge Paula Xinis and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It finally complied with the directive in June, returning Abrego Garcia to the United States. But the Justice Department said that it had returned him to the U.S. only so that he could face a federal indictment, dated May 21, charging him with “alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling.”

Last month, the magistrate judge in the Tennessee case, Barbara D. Holmes, ordered the Trump administration to release Abrego Garcia from federal custody on bail during the case. In a scathing order, she skewered the government’s attempts to paint Abrego Garcia as a hardened criminal and gang member. Holmes wrote that the evidence bolstering the government’s claims he allegedly smuggled minors was based largely on hearsay, and even contradictory testimony, from three individuals — two men in detention who were offered deals for their testimony, and a woman related to one of them. 

Since then, the administration has said they plan to have Abrego Garcia arrested by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and that he could be deported to a third country, or one that is not his place of origin — forcing his lawyers to request he stay in Justice Department custody for now, a request the Tennessee court temporarily granted. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, meanwhile, previously wrote on X that Abrego Garcia “will be tried, jailed, and then deported again to El Salvador.”

In a filing before Xinis in Maryland, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers write that the Trump administration has “refused to identify which country they propose to remove him to, thereby denying him the opportunity to seek protection from removal to that country as required by law.”

The lawyers request that the court order that “defendants may not remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States without first providing him and his counsel with written notice of the specific country they intend to remove him to, and a reasonable period of time — which Plaintiffs respectfully suggest is ten days — to file an application for relief under, among other things, the withholding of removal statute and the Convention Against Torture with respect to such country.”