tortured

New court filings detail man’s ordeal after his mistaken deportation became a flashpoint in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man legally residing in the US state of Maryland, whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported in a high-profile case in March, was severely beaten and subjected to psychological torture in prison there, his lawyers say.

The alleged abuse was detailed in court documents filed in Abrego Garcia’s civil lawsuit against the Trump administration on Wednesday, providing an account of his experiences following his deportation for the first time.

Abrego Garcia’s case has become a flashpoint in the US government’s controversial immigration crackdown since he was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March, despite an earlier order by an immigration judge barring such a move.

According to his lawyers, Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador as a teenager to avoid gang violence, arriving in the United States around 2011. He has lived for more than a decade in Maryland, where he and his American wife are raising three children.

He was returned to the US last month and is currently locked in a legal battle with the US government, which has indicted him on charges of migrant smuggling and says it plans to deport him to a third country.

“Plaintiff Abrego Garcia reports that he was subjected to severe mistreatment upon arrival at CECOT, including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture,” his lawyers said in the filing, referring to the Salvadoran mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Centre, or CECOT.

Severe beatings, threats

The filings, made in a civil suit in federal court against the US government brought by Abrego Garcia’s wife in Maryland, said her husband was hit and kicked so frequently upon his arrival at the prison that the next day his body was covered in lumps and bruises.

The filings also said he and other inmates were forced to kneel for nine hours straight throughout the night, or were hit by guards, in a cruel exercise of sleep deprivation.

It said prison staff repeatedly threatened to transfer Abrego Garcia to cells with gang members who would “tear” him apart, and claimed that he lost 31 pounds (14kg) in his first two weeks in jail as a result of the abuse.

‘Administrative error’

Abrego Garcia was detained by immigration officials and deported to El Salvador on March 15. Trump and US officials have accused him of belonging to the notorious MS-13 gang, which he denies.

The deportation took place despite an order from a US immigration judge in 2019, which barred Abrego Garcia from being sent back to El Salvador because he likely faced persecution there from gangs.

Abrego Garcia’s treatment gained worldwide attention, with critics of Trump’s aggressive immigration policy saying it demonstrated how officials were ignoring due process in their zeal to deport migrants. The Trump administration later described the deportation as an “administrative error”.

Last month, the US government complied with a directive from the court to return Abrego Garcia to the US, but only after having secured an indictment charging him with working with coconspirators as part of a smuggling ring to bring immigrants to the US illegally.

He is currently being detained in Nashville, Tennessee, while his criminal case is pending, having pleaded not guilty to illegally transporting undocumented immigrants.

The US government is arguing that the new civil suit is now moot, as Abrego Garcia has been returned from El Salvador. It has said it plans to deport him to a third country after he is released from custody.

Abrego Garcia a ‘criminal’ for DHS

In the wake of the latest court filings, the Trump administration doubled down on its attacks on Abrego Garcia as a dangerous illegal immigrant.

In a post on the social media platform X, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the “media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal gang member has completely fallen apart”.

“Once again the media is falling all over themselves to defend Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” it said.

“This illegal alien is an MS-13 gang member, alleged human trafficker, and a domestic abuser,” DHS claimed, without providing any evidence.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-MD, speaks with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant living in Maryland and deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, in San Salvador, El Salvador on Thursday, April 17, 2025. File photo by President Nayib Bukele/UPI | License Photo

July 3 (UPI) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported in March, alleged in court documents filed Wednesday that he was tortured in an El Salvador prison.

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia filed an amended complaint in his lawsuit against the Trump administration that outlines what happened with him after he was deported to the Central American country on March 15.

Abrego Garcia told his lawyers that he was subjected to severe mistreatment upon arrival at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center mega prison, enduring alleged severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition and psychological torture.

“Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave,” a prison official told the detainees, including Abrego Garcia, who recounted his ordeal to his lawyers.

Abrego Garcia alleged that he was forced to strip and issued prison clothing while authorities kicked him in the legs with boots and hit him on the head and arms to make him change clothes faster. His head was then shaved and he was marched to a cell while he was struck by wooden batons along the way.

“By the following day, plaintiff Abrego Garcia had visible bruises and lumps all over his body,” the lawyers wrote in the court documents.

The detainees were then allegedly forced to kneel for around nine hours overnight as guards beat anyone who fell from exhaustion. “Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself,” his lawyers wrote.

Later, authorities separated detainees who had visible gang-related tattoos from those who did not. Still, Abrego Garcia was threatened with being sent to the cells where alleged gang members would “tear” him apart.

Abrego Garcia lost 31 pounds in the first two weeks of his detention and he was eventually transferred to another prison in Santa Ana, El Salvador.

The latest court documents also lay into the Trump administration for its actions since Abrego Garcia was wrongfully deported, including defiance of orders by a federal judge to bring him back to the United States until he was abruptly returned in early June.

Abrego Garcia, 29, was returned to last month to face two federal charges in Tennessee related allege migrant smuggling.

He is currently being held in Nashville.

East African rights groups condemn Tanzania, saying human right activists ‘abandoned’ at border show signs of torture.

A Ugandan human rights activist, arrested in Tanzania after travelling to the country to support an opposition politician at a trial for treason, has been tortured and dumped at the border, according to an NGO.

Ugandan rights group Agora Discourse said on Friday that activist and journalist Agather Atuhaire had been “abandoned at the border by Tanzanian authorities” and showed signs of torture.

The statement echoes reports regarding a Kenyan activist detained at the same time and released a day earlier, and supports complaints of a crackdown on democracy across East Africa.

Atuhaire had travelled to Tanzania alongside Kenyan anticorruption campaigner Boniface Mwangi to support opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who appeared in court on Monday.

Both were arrested shortly after the hearing and held incommunicado.

Tanzanian police had initially told local rights groups that the pair would be deported by air. However, Mwangi was discovered on Thursday on a roadside in northern Tanzania near the Kenyan border.

Agora Discourse said it was “relieved to inform the public that Agather has been found”. However, the rights group’s cofounder Jim Spire Ssentongo confirmed to the AFP news agency on Friday that there were “indications of torture”.

‘Worse than dogs’

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has been accused of increasing authoritarianism, amid rising concerns regarding democracy across East Africa.

Activists travelling to Lissu’s trail accused Tanzania of “collaborating” with Kenya and Uganda in their “total erosion of democratic principles”.

Several high-profile political arrests have highlighted the rights record of Hassan, who plans to seek re-election in October.

The Tanzanian leader has said that her government is committed to respecting human rights. However, she warned earlier this week that foreign activists would not be tolerated in the country as Lissu appeared in court.

“Do not allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here,” Hassan instructed security services.

Several activists from Kenya, including a former justice minister, said they were denied entry to Tanzania as they tried to travel to attend the trial.

Following his return to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Mwangi said that he and Atuhaire had suffered a brutal experience.

“We were both treated worse than dogs, chained, blindfolded and underwent a very gruesome torture,” he told reporters.

“The Government of Tanzania cannot hide behind national sovereignty to justify committing serious crimes and human rights violations against its own citizens and other East Africans,” the International Commission of Jurists in Kenya said in a statement.