Abrego Garcia Says He Was Tortured in El Salvador Prison (3)

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was severely beaten, deprived of sleep and subjected to psychological torture at an El Salvador mega-prison after he was wrongly deported from the US by the Trump administration, his lawyers said in a court filing.

Abrego Garcia spent more than three weeks at the notorious terrorism confinement center known as CECOT before he was transferred to another lockup in El Salvador and ultimately brought back to the US to face criminal charges.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued in a court filing that in light of the abuse he was subject to at the prison, he should be returned to Maryland so he can contest his continued detention in the state where he was living with his wife and child before his arrest in March by immigration officials.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, writing on his X account, denied that Abrego Garcia was tortured in his country.

Abrego Garcia’s case has become a lightning rod for President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, under which the administration has increased deportations of undocumented migrants. Attorney General Pam Bondi has said an investigation determined that Abrego Garcia was a member of the criminal gang MS-13 — a claim he denies — and a “danger to our community.”

Read More: Fearing Deportation, Abrego Garcia Asks to Stay in Jail

His lawyers said in the filing that when he and about 260 other deportees arrived at CECOT on March 15, they were greeted by a prison official who stated, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.”

He was then forced to strip and “subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster,” his lawyers wrote. After that, his head was shaved and he was beaten with wooden batons as he was he was frog-marched to a cell with some 20 other Salvadorans. The inmates were forced to kneel on the floor all night “with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion,” according to the filing.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys also said his experience at CECOT undercuts the claim that he has gang ties. Prison officials moved some inmates to other cells if they believed them to be gang members, but they did not move Abrego Garcia, according to the filing. “Prison officials explicitly acknowledged that plaintiff Abrego Garcia’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him ‘your tattoos are fine.’”

Human rights groups and the US State Department have issued reports in recent years alleging widespread abuses in Salvadoran prisons.

Meanwhile, the federal judge in Tennessee presiding over the criminal case charging Abrego Garcia with smuggling immigrants in the US on Thursday barred lawyers on both sides from making public statements that could prejudice his right to a fair trial.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers complained that Justice Department officials have made dozens of “inflammatory” comments in the media since the US returned him from El Salvador and indicted him.

El Salvador’s presidency didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The criminal case is US v. Garcia 25-cr-0115, US District Court, Middle District of Tennessee, and the civil detention case is Garcia v. Noem, 25-cv-0951, District of Maryland.

(Updates with El Salvador president’s social media post starting in fourth paragraph.)

--With assistance from Michael McDonald and Jose Orozco.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Robert Burnson in San Francisco at rburnson@bloomberg.net;
Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net

Peter Blumberg

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