For months, major outlets cast Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a mere “Maryland man”—husband, father, neighbor, deportation victim, martyr. It was gossamer; the lightest brush with fact should have shredded it.

You’d think he’d been plucked from the Hyattsville Home Depot while choosing paint chips for the family game room.

By now, you would expect the immigration cartel to move on to a new martyr-of-the-month.

But no—the mythmakers cling to their story. It comes from the same crowd that denied a border crisis for years for the simplest reason: they never wanted a border.

After all, you can’t have a border crisis without a border.

As I wrote in April, the early “Maryland man” coverage wasn’t reporting so much as recording—soft focus where the record demanded hard facts.

Given the significant developments that have occurred, a brief recap is in order. When he first hit national headlines, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was sold as a “Maryland man” wrongly deported to a “notorious” Salvadoran mega-prison.

Turns out Mr. Maryland is a Salvadoran national with allegations of MS-13 associations and domestic violence claims in state protective-order cases.

In 2019, an immigration judge in Baltimore denied asylum, granted withholding of removal to El Salvador only, and denied relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT)—leaving third-country removal squarely on the table. The conclusion’s stray reference to “Guatemala” reads, in context, as a scrivener’s error.

And the centerpiece of the “Maryland man” mythos? His asylum application missed the deadline and was time-barred—no exceptions.

In plain English: he had no lawful right to remain in the United States, no matter what cute monikers the legacy press stapled to his story, and he could be sent to any country that agreed to take him—so long as it wasn’t El Salvador.

While he was in El Salvador, activists and friendly politicians staged pilgrimages and polemics: Why won’t the administration bring him back now?

Inconvenient facts kept piling up, and still the fable held.

El Salvador, one of our staunchest hemispheric allies, was caricatured as a dystopia because the narrative required another villain.

The chattering class’s reverence for America’s allies is highly selective—they gush over France and Ukraine, and sneer at El Salvador.

They also skipped a fundamental point: extradition is a matter of treaty—international law they brandish liberally and misapply routinely.

The U.S.-El Salvador extradition treaty has been on the books since 1911. Its purpose is plain—return fugitives charged with crimes, not unwind immigration cases. This is why the “Why won’t they just bring him back now?” chorus was utter nonsense: you don’t “just bring back” anyone in another sovereign nation.

You request extradition in a criminal case, and the partner state acts in accordance with the treaty.

That’s how the world worked in 1911, and it’s how it works today.

If Secretary of State Philander Knox had asked President Taft to repurpose the treaty to fetch someone merely because immigration activists demanded it, he wouldn’t have made it to the White House luncheon.

Simply put, extradition covers criminal charges, not vibes.

File this under be-careful-what-you-ask-for: There were, in fact, grounds to charge Abrego Garcia in the United States, and DOJ obtained a Tennessee indictment alleging 100-plus alien-smuggling runs—including one flagged after a stop by state troopers in the Volunteer State. 

After the lawyers in Maryland and Tennessee had their innings—and billable hours—Abrego Garcia returned to his preferred Maryland ZIP code, checked in with ICE, was swiftly re-detained, and queued for third-country removal consistent with the governing order—yes, to Uganda.

I don’t know the Spanish for karma, but I suspect Abrego Garcia does.

That was then. This is now.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland has barred DHS—at least for the moment—from executing the very removal order the activist class insisted had been violated by his return to El Salvador.

Congress established a specific forum and pathway for immigration cases, comprising immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and petitions for review in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

With narrow exceptions, it is not the province of a federal district court in Maryland (or the federal district courts in any of the other forty-nine states of the Union).

Captioned as a habeas proceeding—the rare exception—this filing operated as an end-run on Congress’s channeling provisions, transforming a custody inquiry into a de facto bar on removal despite 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(5), (b)(9), and (f)(1).

Due process means the process Congress prescribed—not a bespoke labyrinth ordered by a court of deliberately limited jurisdiction.

And if illegal aliens are to receive new protections beyond those in statute, that begins in the legislature, not in a judge’s chambers.

Anywhere but El Salvador cannot be contorted into nowhere at all—even for a moment.

Judge Xinis may yet recall the limits of her authority; if not, the Fourth Circuit—or the Supreme Court—will.

Defense counsel now state in a court filing that prosecutors offered a plea under which, after any sentence, Abrego Garcia would be removed to Costa Rica; if he declined, the government indicated it would pursue the planned removal to Uganda.

If that’s on offer, Mr. Maryland should punch his ticket before it’s too late.

A note on Uganda: This was an astute move by the administration—on several levels.

Removal need not be to one’s country of origin—especially where, as here, El Salvador is off the table.

And removal isn’t Travelocity; DHS is not restricted to five-star destinations.

Alongside prior third-country removals—South Sudan among them—this has coincided with a rise in self-deportations, sending a clear message: you don’t pick the landing strip.

One more irony: Uganda is the birthplace of progressive wunderkind Zohran Mamdani. The talking heads must decide—either Uganda is a sovereign state worthy of respect or it’s a place no one should ever be sent. They can’t have it both ways (though they’ll try).

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not a “Maryland man.” Never was, never will be.

He is a Salvadoran national under a final removal order and a federal indictment. He’s back because the law—and his own exposure—not grandstanding politicians—demanded it.

When justice is done, he should go—and stay gone.

And if he’s “shopping” destinations, perhaps El Salvador wasn’t so bad after all.

Charlton Allen is an attorney and former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and host of the Modern Federalist podcast. For media inquiries or speaking engagements, please click here. X: @CharltonAllenNC

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