Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is Back in ICE Custody — And Now He’s Facing Deportation to Uganda
Kilmar Abrego Garcia has become the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy. After months in prisons in El Salvador and Tennessee, the father of three was reunited with his family on Friday, Aug. 22. The reunion was short-lived. On Monday, Aug. 25, Abrego Garcia was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during an immigration appointment.
The federal government openly threatened to deport him shortly after he got to Maryland. The sudden arrest of Abrego Garcia just days after getting home feels, to some, as retaliation for standing up. Abrego Garcia is now suing the federal government to stop his deportation to Uganda.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in ICE custody
Abrego Garcia has been away from his family for 160 days after being wrongfully deported to El Salvador. Videos of the emotional reunion are all over social media and they stand as a reminder of the human toll of the aggressive and indiscriminate deportation strategy. This is the second time that Abrego Garcia has been arrested by ICE and threatened with deportation without due process.
“For the first time since March, our client Kilmar Abrego Garcia is reunited with his loving family,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Abrego Garcia told ABC News. “While his release brings some relief, we all know that he is far from safe. ICE detention or deportation to an unknown third country still threaten to tear his family apart. A measure of justice has been done, but the government must stop pursuing actions that would once again separate this family.”
The Maryland father was wrongfully deported in March 2025 and spent months in El Salvador. As Abrego Garcia languished in El Salvador, President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele refused to do anything to address the wrongful deportation. Then, suddenly in June 2025, the Trump administration announced that Abrego Garcia was coming back to the United States. This was after President Trump originally claimed he could bring him back if he wanted to.
Abrego Garcia was brought back to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee. The federal government put renewed scrutiny on a 2022 traffic stop and are claiming that human smuggling occurred. The federal government claims that Abrego Garcia was transporting undocumented people in Tennessee.
He is now facing deportation to Uganda
Uganda entered into an arrangement with the U.S. government to take deportees who can’t be sent to their home country. It is very much similar to what the U.S. has done with El Salvador. Uganda has some conditions that they will not take deportees with criminal records nor will they accept unaccompanied minors. The east African country has also placed a preference of receiving deportees from African nations.
Abrego Garcia is in ICE custody and facing possible deportation to Uganda under this agreement. The federal government is trying to get him to agree to wrongdoing in what his attorney claims is a move to clear their name. Before threatening him with deportation to Uganda, he was offered a deportation to Costa Rica if he took a plea deal for the human smuggling charges.
“The fact that they’re holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty to a crime is such clear evidence that they’re weaponizing the immigration system in a matter that is completely unconstitutional, and specifically weaponizing the decision of which country they send him to,” Sandoval-Moshenberg told NBC News.
In response, Abrego Garcia is suing the Trump administration to prevent his deportation to Uganda.
