How a defunct gang registry helped deliver Kilmar Abrego Garca to a Salvadoran prison

[Nevilledog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/04/19/kilmar-abrego-garcia-ice-police-gang-registry/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/cKRdp

The path to Kilmar Abrego García’s deportation to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador began six years ago, when a suburban Maryland police detective typed a critical allegation into a Gang Interview Field Sheet.

“An active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique,” wrote the detective in 2019, after detaining Abrego García at a Home Depot in Prince George’s County while he stood in the parking lot looking for construction work. His proof: an unnamed confidential informant and Abrego García’s Chicago Bulls cap, which the officer wrote in his report was “indicative of Hispanic gang culture.”

The allegations in that report — vehemently disputed by Abrego García’s family and attorneys — have become central to the government’s reasoning for deporting him in an escalating legal battle between the Trump administration and the judicial branch. That case alleges federal officials violated the man’s due process rights when they deported him last month to the Salvadoran government’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), despite an immigration judge’s order expressly barring that.

Yet federal officials are bucking a Maryland District Court judge’s orders to facilitate Abrego García’s return — and have launched a full-throated effort to label him a gang member, a “terrorist” and a “human trafficker.”

*snip*

[Lochloosa]

1. And the worse part of this is:

Within a month of writing that report, Mendez was suspended in April 2019 for providing information to a commercial sex worker who he was paying in exchange for sexual acts. He was later fired.

Just another dirty cop ruining peoples lives.

[KT2000]

2. Explains everything

They don't want this info in court and the fact that the detective used such dubious indicators for gang membership. All will be investigated now. THeir shady tactics must not be revealed or they will look like the idiots they are.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[Mountainguy]

4. Would be pretty impressive

If any active gang meme Rs only contact with police was during an interview in a home depot parking lot.