I've Covered Immigration for a Decade. I've Never Seen the Government Do This Before.

"Kilmar Abrego Garcia has spent the past several months on an involuntary tour of detention centers at home and abroad. Back in March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked up the Maryland dad and took him to immigration detention facilities in Louisiana and then Texas before the U.S. government flew him to the notorious Salvadoran megaprison CECOT-which Trump administration officials have admitted was a mistake."

"Months after a federal judge ordered him returned to the U.S., he was brought back in June and immediately taken into criminal custody in Tennessee before he was once again ordered released, at which point he was swiftly put back into ICE custody and shuttled to a facility in Virginia. Over the course of a few months, Abrego Garcia has been in at least three immigration detention facilities, one criminal facility, and a foreign gulag entirely unauthorized to receive U.S. detainees,"

Kilmar Abrego Garcia endured months of involuntary transfers among U.S. immigration detention centers in Louisiana, Texas, and Virginia, a Tennessee criminal facility, and the unauthorized Salvadoran prison CECOT. Government officials transported him internationally despite lacking a clear legal basis for ongoing detention and a federal judge ordering his return to the United States. Prosecutors pursued a thin trafficking charge and allegedly offered a plea in exchange for voluntary deportation to Costa Rica, warning that refusal could result in forcible removal to Uganda. A judge temporarily blocked deportation until early October while reviewing legality, and Abrego García is renewing his asylum application.

Read at Slate Magazine