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Abrego Garcia Was Beaten and Tortured in El Salvador Prison, Lawyers Say
- Alan Feuer, New York Times
- Jul 2
- 5 min read
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was made to kneel overnight, denied bathroom access and confined in an overcrowded cell with bright lights and no windows, his lawyers say.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, was beaten, deprived of sleep and psychologically tortured during the nearly three months he spent in Salvadoran custody, according to court papers filed on Wednesday evening by his lawyers.
The papers, filed in Federal District Court in Maryland, detailed a litany of horrors that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said he suffered while being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, one of El Salvador’s most notorious prisons.
His lawyers said that he and 20 other Salvadoran men who were deported to the prison from the United States on March 15 were once made to kneel overnight “with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion.”
During the time he spent there, the lawyers said, Mr. Abrego Garcia was “denied bathroom access and soiled himself.” He and other prisoners were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell that had no windows, but was outfitted with bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day.
When Mr. Abrego Garcia first arrived at the prison, his lawyers maintained, he was greeted by an official who told him, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.”
Two weeks later, the lawyers added, he had lost nearly 31 pounds.
The court papers offer a startling glimpse of the conditions under which Mr. Abrego Garcia was held. Even though his description aligns with what is known about the prison and the treatment of detainees, the more than 200 Venezuelans who were sent to CECOT on the same set of flights that day were placed in a separate cell block, leaving it unclear whether they were subject to different conditions.
The papers were submitted to Judge Paula Xinis, who had issued the initial order in April instructing the Trump administration to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from El Salvador. The papers included a revised version of the original complaint the lawyers filed in March seeking his return from Salvadoran custody. They asked Judge Xinis to immediately free their client from custody in the United States.
Mr. Abrego Garcia is currently being held by federal authorities in Nashville after the Trump administration, in a surprising move, brought him back from El Salvador last month after weeks of asserting it was powerless to do so. But the Justice Department stated that it had returned him for a specific reason: to stand trial on a federal indictment accusing him of having taken part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants as a member of the violent street gang MS-13.
The new filing by his lawyers appeared to undercut charges that he was a member of MS-13 as well as a specific accusation lodged by President Trump himself that his tattoos indicated he belonged to the gang.
The filing claimed that Salvadoran prison officials recognized that Mr. Abrego Garcia “was not affiliated with any gang” and acknowledged that his tattoos “were not gang-related,” going so far as to tell him at one point, “Your tattoos are fine.”
A spokeswoman for El Salvador’s president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Almost from the moment that Mr. Abrego Garcia was back on U.S. soil, there has been uncertainty about what might happen to him next.
It remains unclear if he will remain in jail on his criminal charges as the case moves through the courts or will be released on bail and placed instead into immigration custody as an undocumented migrant. It is also possible that he could be expelled from the country again just weeks after the Trump administration brought him back.
Along with their revised complaint, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed separate papers on Wednesday evening, repeating their request to Judge Xinis to issue a new order that would effectively bar him from being sent out of the country until further notice.
Later on Wednesday night, the Justice Department was expected to ask the federal judge in his criminal case to reverse another judge’s decision allowing his release and keep him locked up on the indictment as he awaits trial.
Much of the confusion has stemmed from ambiguous — even contradictory — statements from the Trump administration and from what appears to be dueling views from the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security about how to handle the case.
Early last month, things seemed somewhat clearer.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced at a news conference on June 6 that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been returned to the United States to face immigrant smuggling charges in Federal District Court in Nashville. She insisted that he would be re-deported only after his criminal case was over.
“Upon completion of his sentence,” Ms. Bondi said, “we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador.”
But last week, a Justice Department lawyer introduced a new twist. During a hearing in Maryland, the lawyer, Jonathan Guynn, told Judge Xinis that the administration planned to expel Mr. Abrego Garcia again — this time, not to El Salvador but to an unnamed third country.
While Mr. Guynn made clear that there were “no imminent plans” to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia, other Trump officials immediately sought to clarify his comments. In some ways, their efforts only further muddied the waters.
First, a White House spokeswoman posted a message on social media describing news accounts of Mr. Guynn’s statements as “fake news.” Then an administration official, repeating what Ms. Bondi had said at her news conference, asserted that the Justice Department was still planning to try Mr. Abrego Garcia before deporting him again.
All of this was sufficiently perplexing to the lawyers handling Mr. Abrego Garcia’s criminal case that they made an unusual request to a federal magistrate judge in Tennessee. Even though the judge, Barbara D. Holmes, had already decided that their client should be freed from criminal custody and handed over to the Department of Homeland Security, they asked her to delay his release for at least two weeks, concerned that if the transfer took place, D.H.S. might soon re-deport him.
The Justice Department agreed to the request. But in a filing to Judge Holmes, the department appeared to leave open the possibility of the thing it said would not happen — that D.H.S. might, in fact, expel Mr. Abrego Garcia again.
“The prosecution intends to see this case to resolution,” lawyers for the department told the judge. “Yet as stated before this court as recently as June 25, 2025, D.H.S. will and must follow their own process, relevant regulations, the existing federal statutory scheme, and appropriate case law in handling the defendant’s future immigration proceedings and potential deportation.”
In the coming days, there will be two hearings — one in Maryland and one in Tennessee — that will help determine what will happen to Mr. Abrego Garcia.
The first is scheduled for Monday in front of Judge Xinis who will consider, among other things, the request for the new order to keep Mr. Abrego Garcia in the United States. Such an order, if granted, would come months after her original decision, handed down in April, instructing the Trump administration to bring him back from overseas.
The second hearing is set to take place on July 16 in front of Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., the district court judge who is handling the criminal case. Judge Crenshaw is expected to reconsider the ruling by Judge Holmes freeing Mr. Abrego Garcia from criminal custody. He might also weigh in on the question of deportation.
Until then, Mr. Abrego Garcia will remain in the hands of federal jailers in Tennessee, placed there protectively by his lawyers.
(c) 2025, The New York Times
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