Court documents released in Abrego Garcia case

[struggle4progress]

By Paul Wagner, News4 Reporter and Jackie Bensen, News4 Reporter • Published April 16, 2025 • Updated on April 16, 2025 at 11:57 pm

... When Prince George’s County police stopped Abrego Garcia back on March 28, 2019, he was standing in a parking lot with three other men. He was looking for work, and according to the attorney who represented him back then, the officer who stopped him was suspended four days later and accused of misconduct in office.

In a statement to News4, Lucia Curiel, the attorney who represented Abrego Garcia at his immigration hearings, said, “At Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s immigration court hearing, the ICE attorney stated to the judge that the only ‘intel’ they had on him was in fact that ‘intel’ from the [Prince George's County] gang unit officer. They had nothing else and the PG officer responsible for the allegations was later fired” ...

Hours later, the Department of Homeland Security posted on its X account images of a temporary protective order ... in May of 2021 ...

NBC News received a statement Wednesday night from Kilmar Vasquez Sura regarding the temporary protective order she filed against him four years ago. She said, in part, "After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar — by seeking a civil protective order — in case things escalated. Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through this situation privately as a family — including by going to counseling. Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. That is not a justification for ICE's action — of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation" ...

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/doj-releases-document-in-kilmar-abrego-garcia-deportation-case/3893938/

[OLDMDDEM]

1. I wish the Maryland Attorney General would have a grand jury hearing on the ICE people

kidnapped Garcia. If he comes up no longer alive, then murder charges should be filed, or at least accessory to murder.

[Lovie777]

2. Bring him home......

[Tickle]

3. Garcia kicked her with his boot and hit her in the eye! He's not such a good guy

He had been living in Maryland with Vasquez Sura , their 5-year-old child, and two step-children. Vasquez Sura has denied that he is affiliated with MS-13.

In the 2021 documents obtained by ABC News, Vasquez Sura noted two past incidents, alleging that in 2020, Abrego Garcia hit her with his work boot and that in August 2020, he hit her in the eye.

The protective order was dismissed a month after it was issued, on June 17, 2021, after Vasquez Sura failed to appear in court, according to a signed order of dismissal by a judge.

ABC News also obtained documents submitted to a Maryland court in August 2018 by a man who claimed to be the father of two of Vasquez Sura's children. In a five-page motion for an emergency hearing, he said he feared for the children's lives, in part, "because she is dating a gang member and attempted self-harm," the records state.

The man did not include the name of the individual he alleged is a gang member. It is not known if he was referring to Abrego Garcia.

[CincyDem]

5. He's not a good guy...but whatever his transgressions, they don't warrant extrajudicial detention in a concentration camp.

This is how they reframe the narrative. This guy is not perfect and, in fact may be so far from perfect that he might belong in prison…after a trial.

[Tickle]

6. I know, you are right, but

When a man hits a woman, it's rarely an isolated incident. Abuse is almost always part of a repeated and escalating pattern.
He didn’t just make a mistake—he established a pattern. Funny how a man can raise his hand to a woman and still get polished up like a saint.

[oregonjen]

7. We are/were a nation of laws. He was not afforded due process.

[boston bean]

10. A lot of men gotta be deported to concentration camps in El Salvador then.

[Tanuki]

16. Ivana Trump testified that Donald raped her and tore some of her hair out

by the roots in a fit of rage over a failed hair transplant by a surgeon she had recommended. Put him on the list!

[Ms. Toad]

12. First, I haven't heard him polished up like a saint.

What I have heard is that (1) he was in this country without the proper permissions (hardly saint-like) (2) he had an order withholding removal to El Salvador - but was otherwise deportable (again, hardly saint-like), (3) that he has a wife and child (lots of non-saints have wives and children), (4) he was taken off the street in front of his child, not given due process, and shipped to the very place he had an order not to be sent (this reflects on those who disappeared him, not on him), (5) that his wife took a protective order out against him after a dispute because her own history of domestic violence made her overly cautions and - according to her - they worked things out privately with the help of counseling and (6) that - like all marriages - theirs was not perfect.

Second - all of that is about as relevant to his right not to be disappeared by the US as is the woman they trotted out at the press conference yesterday trying to make the case that all undocumented immigrants from El Salvador are violent and deserve whatever fate befalls them.

I'm not making light of domestic violence. It is a deadly serious issue. But using two instances of domestic violence (it is not even clear they were distinct - and his wife 5 years later says they did not escalate) to suggest that he is a bad person who is a serial abuser and (by implication) deserves whatever he got is offensive

[CincyDem]

14. I agree with you and certainly don't think I was polishing him up for sainthood.

There is no question in my mind that violence against women, both inside and outside intimate relationships, is indefensible and is NOT given the attention it deserves on a societal level. I would also add that that “due process” of punishing offenders is painfully challenging for any woman involved.

All that said, we are a country that has long stood on the principles of due process AND avoiding “cruel and unusual punishment”…and in this case, both those bedrock principles have been violated.

I don’t know if we have all the details of his incidents with his partner but I’ll stipulate that they are 100% true and her initial accounting of events is pure fact. With those facts on the table, snatching him off the street and exporting him to an overseas concentration camp is not how we deal with those facts. (BTW - the administration isn’t claiming they disappeared him because of his violence against women…he’s gone because he was a Bulls fan who ran into a shady cop with a grudge against brown people and a quota to fill).

This thing feels like how we talk about the first amendment…easy to support when we’re hearing agreeable speech but the real challenge comes in defending one’s ability to espouse opinions we disagree with. We can’t be accept due process violations simply on the premise that “he (or she) was a bad person anyway so it’s hard to defend him/her”.

We’re NOT defending him…we’re defending each of us…because this is a reapplication of 1939 Germany…deport/persecute people in society that are difficult for society of the time to defend (Roma/Gay/Lesbian/etc), get society used to the deportations, and then move up the food chain…and eventually, odds are it gets to us.

[madville]

15. They also like to leave some facts out

The protective order details read pretty bad for him, like ripping her clothes off and scratching her eyes but some outlets won’t include those because they don’t want to turn public opinion on him because their angle is to fight Trump’s actions no matter what. The public isn’t going to sympathize well with an alleged wife beater.

Of course his legal team will try to paint him in the best light possible, and coach his wife to defend him in public as well. They’re potentially looking at at least a seven figure payday for both the lawyers and the family so it’s their job to portray him as a saint.

[FirstLight]

4. so he's been targeted by them because he had a "record"...? Or something else?

How did ICE get him on their radar? Were they just trolling for people and got 'lucky' because the man has a past...? I dont know the details of his abduction, does anyone?

[Ms. Toad]

8. They were looking for someone else,

He happened to be brown, in the area, and wearing what they called gang identifiers (a Bulls ballcap and a hoodie)

[FirstLight]

9. that's it...? THAT is their story...?

Geezus! ...even the cop/crime shows on TV know you need more probable cause! ugh

[Ms. Toad]

13. Looks like I merged two incidents together -

The incident I described was prior to his getting a withholding order.

The Justice Department shared records, not previously made public, detailing how police officers in Maryland assessed Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang during an arrest in 2019. He had no criminal history at the time, which the documents also state, and his attorneys have denied that he is a gang member.

In a document titled “gang field interview sheet,” the Prince George’s County Police Department detailed how in March 2019 it approached Abrego Garcia along with three other people for loitering at a Home Depot parking lot in Hyattsville. Abrego Garcia said in a court filing that he was there looking for day labor work.

Police said he was wearing “a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents” on the bills.

The officers said such insignia — indicating “ver, oir, y callar” or “see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil” — was “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture.”

The court, in 2019, reacted as you did - and issued the protective order preventing his removal to El Salvador.

I merged the two incidents in my mind, because it is those very things which the administration is now citing as proof that he is a dangerous gang member (Chicago Bulls hat with a hoodie).

They grabbed him out of a different parking lot this time . . . with no more evidence than they had in 2019.

[Tickle]

11. he was picking his son up

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 12, 2025, while picking up his son from his grandmother's house. ICE agents informed him that his immigration status had changed and took him into custody after his wife arrived to care for their child. Despite a 2019 court order protecting him from deportation due to credible threats from gangs in El Salvador, he was deported on March 15, 2025, to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a maximum-security prison known for its harsh conditions