The wife of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration, has been moved to a safe house by supporters after U.S. officials posted a court document on social media that included the family’s address.
A US State Department cable was sent from the American Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, on March 13th with some major news: Rwanda said it was willing to accept deportees from the United States who are unable to be sent to their country of origin for fear of persecution. A copy of the cable reviewed by The Handbasket in March confirmed the news. And now according to a new cable, which has also been reviewed by The Handbasket, the first person has officially been deported from the US to Rwanda via this new arrangement.
The Trump administration’s efforts to deport as many people as possible is loudly and publicly underway, most notably with the 238 men who were sent to El Salvador in March without due process. Unlike those cases, however, the administration has opted to quietly send Iraqi national Omar Abdulsattar Ameen from the US to Rwanda, wherein Rwanda acts as a “third country.” But it remains unclear what legal processes allowed for this to happen.
The cable, sent today—April 22, 2025—confirms Ameen’s “relocation” has already happened.
https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/us-rwanda-relocates-iraqi-refugee-omar-ameen
At least two Venezuelan immigrants who were detained by ICE and deported from the U.S. have completely disappeared, their families said Tuesday.
Relatives of Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel, 27, spoke with the Miami Herald, while family and friends of Ricardo Prada Vasquez, 32, told his story to the New York Times.
Leon Rengel arrived in the U.S. in June 2023 and was allowed to remain in the country while his immigration case was considered, the Herald reported. But on March 13, ICE agents stopped him at his apartment in the Dallas suburb of Irving and hauled him away.
Prada Vasquez was similarly permitted to stay in the U.S. while his immigration case was handled, according to the Times. However, he made a wrong turn from Detroit into Canada in January and was sent to immigration jail.
Both families suspect Leon Rengel and Prada Vasquez were on one of three deportation flights on March 15 from the U.S. to El Salvador, where suspected gang members were sent to a mega-prison in the capital city of San Salvador.
However, neither Leon Rengel nor Prada Vasquez have any criminal history of gang involvement. Prada Vasquez had no record in the U.S., while Leon Rengel paid a single fine for marijuana possession in Texas, the Herald reported.
Both men were no longer listed in the U.S. immigration system, and federal officials confirmed both had been removed from the country. However, family members in Venezuela haven’t been able to find either man.
Donald Trump slammed the Supreme Court on Monday after the justices temporarily blocked him from deporting Venezuelan immigrants, while asserting that America “cannot give everyone a trial” – a bedrock constitutional right.
Warning that the executive branch’s claims should shock “the intuitive sense of liberty” of Americans, a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit today unanimously rejected the Trump administration’s attempts to stay a lower court order to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a prison camp in El Salvador.
The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration last week to facilitate the release of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man that three government officials admitted was mistakenly sent to El Salvador’s most notorious prison, along with several hundred other alleged gang members. However, the Trump administration has done nothing to comply with that order; it insists it has no power to return Abrego Garcia from another sovereign state—nor does a court have the authority to force it to do so.
When the federal district judge overseeing Abrego Garcia’s case attempted to enforce the Supreme Court’s order, the Trump administration requested an emergency stay from the Fourth Circuit Court.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the Fourth Circuit, wrote that allowing the administration’s passive interpretation of “facilitate” would “reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood.”
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter,” Wilkinson wrote. “But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.”
“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear,” Wilkinson warned.
Trump administration officials have made no secret of its contempt for the concept of due process.
The wife of the man the Trump administration deported and has indefinitely imprisoned in El Salvador’s notorious gang prison spoke out this week in various interviews.
MSNBC anchor Ana Cabrera noted on Wednesday, “Also still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that Maryland father who was wrongfully deported as the administration admits was almost a month ago. Now he was sent to that prison in El Salvador. His future remains in limbo. I spoke with his wife earlier today, take a listen.”
“I want them to bring him back. I want to know when they will bring him back,” Jennifer Vasquez told Cabrera.
“Because my kids asked. When is he coming? I don’t have an answer,” she added.
Despite the Supreme Court’s 9-0 ruling that Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be returned to the U.S., Bimbo #2 Kristi Noem is too dimwitted to get the message:
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Wednesday, “We’re confident that people that are [imprisoned in El Salvador] should be there, and they should stay there for the rest of their lives.” Notably, the Trump administration previously said that Garcia was deported as a result of an “administrative error” as he had been granted “protected status” in the U.S. by a judge, meaning he could not be deported back to El Salvador for fear for his safety. The administration, however, continues to maintain Garcia was a gang member.
Trump’s moves have been frequently stymied so far by lower courts, forcing him to appeal his cases at the Supreme Court where 6-3 the conservative majority has given him some early wins — or at least delays.
But in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, a unanimous decision by the nine justices appeared to support a lower court’s ruling that the Trump administration — and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — cannot and should not leave a Maryland man in a prison in El Salvador after admitting that the U.S. mistakenly sent him there.
(The Trump administration claimed, implausibly, that it could not bring Abrego Garcia back, despite its mistake in deporting and imprisoning him.)
…
Decrying what many view as the administration’s overt violation of core American principles, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) asserted that “there is a special place in HELL for the people who are willing to argue to the Supreme Court that the man they MISTAKENLY sent to an El Salvador prison should stay there.”
The Trump administration said it would not provide information on how it will get a wrongly deported Maryland dad home by a Friday morning deadline because the timeframe a judge imposed was “impracticable.”
In effect, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is openly defying a court order that requires it to provide details about 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts and how he will be brought back stateside.
Abrego Garcia was flown to a mega prison in El Salvador last month due to an “administrative error.” Despite the DOJ admitting its mistake, it argued it did not have the authority to bring Abrego Garcia home because he was now in the custody of El Salvador.
Maryland District Court Judge Paula Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, disagreed and ruled that Abrego Garcia must be returned stateside, where he has an American wife and child and was working legally as a sheet metal apprentice prior to being taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during what he believed to be a routine traffic stop.
The issue reached the Supreme Court on Thursday. The high court, which has a conservative majority, ruled unanimously that the Trump administration must take steps to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.
The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration must work to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to prison in El Salvador, rejecting the administration’s emergency appeal.
The court acted in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered Abrego Garcia, now being held in a notorious Salvadoran prison, returned to the United States by midnight Monday.
“The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the court said in an unsigned order with no noted dissents.
King Donald has been slapped down 9-0!
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-maryland-deportation-trump-9f46dd62890befdc321ed1ab56107470
Attorney General Pam Bondi was caught skipping out of a press conference as she avoided answering a reporter’s question on migrants without criminal records sent to El Salvador….
“60 Minutes found that 75% of the immigrants who were sent to El Salvador do not have public criminal records. Is that true?” the correspondent asked as Pam Bondi stepped outside to take questions on immigration from reporters.
As part of her reply, Bimbo #3 & Airhead Extraordinaire says:
“So if you committed a murder in our country, we’re gonna keep you here and we’re gonna seek the death penalty and we’re gonna keep you in prison because our victims’ families deserve that, but we don’t have to charge them with every crime. We can deport them and get them out of our country and save room in our prisons because they should have never been in our country to begin with,” she finishes.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that the Venezuelans they’re deporting aren’t really criminals. And the reporter’s follow-up question:
The reporter continues to press her, as Bondi didn’t answer her original question. “So you confirmed they didn’t commit a crime, right?” asked the reporter.
Whereupon Bimbo #3 and Airhead Extraordinaire got flustered and stomped out:
At that point, Bondi turned around and left, ending the press session.
