There six authors in the byline of this story titled “The Story of the ‘Mistakenly Deported Maryland Man’.” I think it’s fair to say the NY Times is going all out here to salvage a failing Democratic effort to make Kilmar Abrego Garcia a sympathetic figure, despite all the bad news that has come out about him in the last few weeks.
The story starts with his boyhood in El Salvador where neighbors described him as a mischievous kid who liked to play pranks. A childhood friend says he “he liked to stir up trouble.” He had an older brother who fled to the US for a better life and as gang problems in his hometown got worse, he also fled when he was about 16 or 17 years old. He crossed the border illegally and eventually made it to Maryland where he worked as a day laborer and later a sheet metal worker.
At age 23 he had a date with a woman who’d been born in Fairfax County, VA named Jennifer Vasquez. Vasquez had two kids from a previous relationship one of whom had epilepsy and the other autism. After Vasquez and Abrego Garcia started dating the father of those two kids sought custody of them both.
Ms. Vasquez’s former partner, a construction worker named Edwin Trejo Ramos, filed a court motion seeking immediate custody of their two children, claiming in part that they were in danger because she was “dating a gang member.”
A judge deemed the matter not an emergency, and the case was later dismissed, in early 2019. In November of that year, Mr. Ramos was charged with raping a 13-year-old girl. He was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison.
We’re not told if Edwin Trejo Ramos, the convicted rapist, is a citizen or an illegal immigrant. In any case, his claim as part of the custody battle is the first time Abrego Garcia is described as a gang member but not the last time.
In March, 2019, Abrego Garcia and three other men were arrested while waiting for work at a Home Depot parking lot. Two of the men turned out to be gang members.
All four men were handcuffed and taken to the Hyattsville station of the Prince George’s County Police Department for interviews. An officer with experience investigating gangs identified one man as “Bimbo,” a member of the MS-13 Sailors clique with an extensive criminal history, and a second man as another gang member called “Maniaco.” As for the third man, the officers “were unable to determine his gang affiliation” and “he was sent on his way,” according to a police report labeled “Gang Field Interview Sheet.”
That left Mr. Abrego Garcia, who was described as 5-foot-7, about 200 pounds, with short hair and a beard. He wore a Chicago Bulls hat and a hooded sweatshirt with a depiction of “rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations.”
The report asserted that the outfit was “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture,” and that the Bulls hat represented “a member in good standing with the MS-13.” In addition, it said, a reliable, unnamed source had identified Mr. Abrego Garcia as a member of MS-13’s Westerns clique who was known as “Chele.”
So he was hanging out talking with “Bimbo” and “Maniaco” but we’re supposed to believe he’s just a “Maryland man.” Personally, I’d like to here more about “Maniaco” and how he got the nickname. Sounds like another upstanding young Maryland man who definitely should not be deported.
Ultimately, the NY Times never really answers the question of whether or not Abrego Garcia is a gang member. They admit early on they don’t know.
Whether Mr. Abrego is an MS-13 gang member — as, with equal vehemence, the Trump administration insists and his family denies — remains unclear.
Would they tell us if they knew? I’m honestly not sure they would. Abrego Garcia was held in ICE custody and three months later he married Vasquez.
In late June, three months after Mr. Abrego Garcia’s arrest, a wedding ceremony was held at a venue not featured in bridal brochures: the Howard County Detention Center in Jessup, Md. There, separated by a glass partition, Ms. Vasquez and Mr. Abrego Garcia exchanged vows in the presence of a pastor. Unable to touch each other, they exchanged rings with the help of a corrections officer.
The possibility that this jailhouse marriage was intended to help keep Abrego Garcia in the US (Vasquez is a citizen) isn’t mentioned in the story. I guess they didn’t ask about that. Eventually an immigration judge ruled that he could not be sent back to El Salvador and let him go.
This brings us to the awkward part of the story where Abrego Garcia repeatedly beats up his wife. There’s nothing the Times can do to avoid mentioning it so the half-dozen authors turn the tone of pathos up to 11:
In a storybook world, Mr. Abrego Garcia would simply return to Prince George’s County, never again to draw the attention of law enforcement. He would blend into the multiracial fabric of the county, where more than half the residents are African American and a quarter are Hispanic or Latino. In some neighborhoods, street vendors set up stands to sell rolled tortilla chips, papas fritas or flavored ices.
But life for Mr. Abrego Garcia continued to be fraught…
Cry me a river, NY Times. His life certainly produced plenty of anxiety for his wife and kids.
One month after Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release, according to those documents and recordings, he began to physically abuse Ms. Vasquez, prompting her to fill out paperwork to secure a protective order against him that December. But, as she told a judge in 2020, she never showed up for court in that case, testifying that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s family had persuaded her not to follow through with it.
But the abuse continued into 2020, she said in testimony and in court records. Mr. Abrego Garcia was kicking her, shoving her, grabbing her hair, slapping her and making everyone in the house afraid, she said…
Less than a year later, Ms. Vasquez filled out another request for a protective order against her husband. In that document, she described an incident in May 2021 in which Mr. Abrego Garcia punched her and scratched her left eye and, later that day, tore her clothes off and grabbed her arm so hard he left marks. But a month later she again failed to appear for a hearing, and the matter was dropped.
His wife repeatedly walked away from putting him in jail for this, either convinced by his family not to follow through or wanting to give him another chance. What she says now is that they sought help and “closed that chapter.”
Then in late 2022 on a trip back from Houston he was pulled over in a truck full of people. Ed already wrote about this earlier today, so check out his post for more. Here’s all the Times says about this very suspicious incident.
In Homeland Security’s version of the trooper’s account, Mr. Abrego Garcia explained that he had left Houston three days earlier and was transporting people in his boss’s car to work in construction in Maryland. But there was no luggage, and the passengers all gave Mr. Abrego Garcia’s home address as their own — leading one officer to suspect the possibility of human trafficking.
The half-dozen authors don’t mention that Abrego Garcia’s boss, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, owned the truck and had been previously convicted of human trafficking. They also don’t mention that Abrego Garcia changed his story about where he was going and where he was coming from. It’s very hard to fit this into the “Maryland Man” fairy tale Democrats are pushing so the Times just skips the details and moves on.
And you know the rest of the story. Abrego Garcia was pulled over and arrested and this time deported to a El Salvador. The administration would later admit that was a mistake because of the prior ruling that he could not be deported to El Salvador. And so this becomes an argument about due process, at least for many who want him returned.
Some of the commenters seem to get it, despite all the weepy pathos injected into this story.
This piece is a good recap and also adds some necessary detail to Mr. Abrego’s encounters with law enforcement. There are certainly unique issues with a court order prohibiting removal to El Salvador and legitimate questions about whether or not a western democracy with a first world justice system should be sending a person of any citizenship under any circumstances to a facility like CECOT. But anyone thinking that Mr. Abrego isn’t the kind of guy who gets a temporary or otherwise fragile status revoked in almost any other country in the world is sorely mistaken. Three separate processes for TRO for domestic violence complaints with visible injury and property damage could be a significant problem for anyone without a permanent status, sometimes even without criminal convictions for underlying offences. Add in his other police contacts, one creating a credible suspicion of activities related to human trafficking, and you’re kidding yourself if you don’t understand why he got picked up and held.
One more.
This is *absolutely* the wrong hill to die on for democrats, and I cannot stress that enough. This party has got to stop glorifying the worst possible people.
And the problem with dems screaming “….BUT DUE PROCESS….” is that outside the left-wing bubble there are *hundreds* of twitter posts and YouTube videos of democrats undermining/blasting/destroying the whole concept of due process.
Anyone here can find twitter posts of Hakeem Jeffries and Aryanna Pressley saying the Kyle Rittenhouse should “be locked up and throw away the key.” AOC expressly asserted – on multiple occasions – that everyone that did not get the COVID vaccine should be denied all access to healthcare. Ron Wyden threated to simply lock up Elon Musk if he did not censor Twitter to his liking. These are just a handful of examples – and they are 100% true. Please google them. I could keep going for hours.
And to be clear, due process is an absolute necessity in society. My point is that dems only think it applies to people they find sympathetic. Outside the politically indoctrinated, nobody is fooled by these alligator tears.
They gave it their best shot but Abrego Garcia just isn’t a very sympathetic victim. The NY Times just didn’t have much to work with.
