Left: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland and deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, speaks in a hotel restaurant in San Salvador, El Salvador, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Press Office Senator Van Hollen, via AP). Right: President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after arriving on Air Force One, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Lawyers for wrongly deported Salvadoran citizen Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious terrorist prison in El Salvador earlier this year despite having protected status to stay in the U.S., have accused the Trump administration of lying to a federal judge over the man's recent efforts to self-deport to Costa Rica.
"Recent developments" in a separate case — specifically, the deportation effort filed against Abrego Garcia in Maryland — "make crystal clear that the government is willing to mislead the courts and defy court orders intended to shed light on its conduct, all in service of punishing Mr. Abrego," according to the Sunday filing before U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Tennessee. As Law&Crime has previously reported, Abrego Garcia was charged with human smuggling in that state after finally being returned to the U.S. He has since filed a motion to dismiss based on vindictive and selective prosecution, arguing that President Donald Trump's administration is retaliating against him for successfully challenging his own deportation.
"This provides further proof — if any were needed — of the government's vindictiveness toward Mr. Abrego and underscores the need for discovery into the motivations of the high-level officials who initiated this prosecution and are ultimately responsible for the government's misrepresentations regarding Mr. Abrego's third-country removal," the filing adds.
Sunday's motion appears to be an effort to bring Crenshaw up to speed on developments in his habeas case in Maryland, overseen by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. As Abrego Garcia's lawyers explain, the government "now seeks to deport him to a distant third country in Africa where he does not speak the language, has no connections, and questions remain as to whether he would live freely."
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The Trump administration has "tried again and again" to send Abrego Garcia to Africa — "first Uganda, then Eswatini and Ghana, and now Liberia."
Abrego Garcia, meanwhile, says that the Central American country of Costa Rica has indicated an unequivocal willingness to take him in.
"That country had previously offered written assurances, as of August 21, 2025, that it would accept Mr. Abrego as a refugee, grant him legal status, and prevent his refoulement to El Salvador," the filing says.
Trump immigration officials, however, allegedly told Xinis this was not the case.
"On November 14, 2025, the government claimed in a sealed filing in the habeas proceeding that 'Costa Rica has represented that it would not simply accept Petitioner if asked' and that '[t]he government can hardly be at fault for not removing Petitioner to a country that refuses to accept him,'" the filing says, adding that Acting ICE Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations John E. Cantu stated in a declaration that, essentially, "it was the Department of State's position that Costa Rica would not accept Mr. Abrego without further negotiations."
These representations, however, were "revealed to be flatly false," according to Abrego Garcia's filing.
"In a statement to the Washington Post, Costa Rican Minister of Public Security Mario Zamora Cordero reiterated that his country would receive Mr. Abrego 'under humanitarian conditions that guarantee the full respect for his rights and liberties' and '[t]hat position that we have expressed in the past remains valid and unchanged to this day,'" the filing says. "Mr. Zamora Cordero confirmed that 'Costa Rica's offer to receive Mr. Abrego Garcia for humanitarian reasons stands' and would not require additional negotiations."
The government's decision to file its assertion — that Costa Rica signaled it wouldn't accept Abrego Garcia if asked — under seal is further proof of its duplicity, the filing says.
"It appears the government did so to prevent the government of Costa Rica from catching wind of its misrepresentations," the filing says. "Indeed, on November 20, Judge Xinis ordered the government to remove unnecessary redactions from its submission, including that portion concerning Costa Rica's representations. Only after the government filed a revised version of its submission on November 21 did the government of Costa Rica issue its statement to the Washington Post to correct the record."
The filing also noted Xinis' displeasure with Cantu's own in-court testimony on the matter.
"At the evidentiary hearing on Thursday in Maryland, Mr. Cantu testified, in substance, that a State Department attorney told him what to put in his declaration on a five-minute Teams call and email on November 7, and that he did not know whether the Department of State had even been in contact with Costa Rica," the filing says. "Judge Xinis again excoriated the government for putting on a witness who had 'zero information' for the court — Mr. Cantu was 'the worst' of the witnesses the government had put on the stand thus far — and he 'knew nothing' and 'didn't know the meaning of the words in his own affidavit.'"
This "shocking (yet, sadly, now predictable) conduct" by the government is relevant to Abrego Garcia's motion to dismiss for vindictive and selective prosecution, the Maryland man's lawyers argue.
Despite Abrego Garcia's willingness to self-deport to Costa Rica — a country that has signaled its willingness to accept him — "the only reason the government will not send him there is because that is where Mr. Abrego is willing to go," the filing says. This targeting of Abrego Garcia, his lawyers say, "goes up to the highest levels of the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security" and warrants expanded discovery.
Moreover, the Trump administration's "recent conduct with respect to Costa Rica confirms that retaliatory animus toward Mr. Abrego originates at levels above the individual prosecutors in this case, making discovery into the motivations of high-ranking officials who have driven this sustained campaign of retribution all the more essential."
The government's action in the Maryland case bears directly on the criminal proceedings in Tennessee, Abrego Garcia's team says.
"[T]he government's brazen and misleading conduct regarding Costa Rica further proves the government's actual vindictiveness," the filing says.
