American labor unions are calling on El Salvador to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S., calling his deportation by the Trump administration an “egregious violation of our brother’s rights.”
Last month immigration officials wrongly sent Abrego Garcia, an apprentice sheet metal worker who lived in Maryland, to his native El Salvador, where he remains in prison. The Supreme Court has ordered the White House to help bring him back.
Administration officials have acknowledged he was deported due to an administrative error, but so far have tried to wash their hands of the matter. The president has pointed to a photoshopped picture as evidence Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang MS-13, something Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have repeatedly denied.
In a joint letter to the Salvadoran embassy Thursday, labor leaders urged the government to return Abrego Garcia to his family and ensure justice for “all other workers who have been detained or deported without appropriate legal procedures.”
“As a labor movement, we categorically reject the vicious attacks on immigrant workers like Kilmar Abrego Garcia being carried out by the Trump administration,” they wrote. “These dangerous anti-worker, anti-union tactics have been weaponized as a tool to sow fear and division and to distract from the corporate takeover of our democratic and economic systems.”
The letter was signed by Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation; James Williams, Jr., president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, or IUPAT; Gwen Mills, president of the hospitality union Unite Here; and Michael Coleman, president of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, or SMART, which is Abrego Garcia’s union.
“We categorically reject the vicious attacks on immigrant workers like Kilmar Abrego Garcia being carried out by the Trump administration.”
- U.S. labor leaders in a letter to the Salvadoran embassy
The letter is notable for including signatories from the building trades. Historically, that wing of the labor movement has not supported immigrants’ rights to the degree more liberal unions have. But some — IUPAT in particular — have staked out progressive stances on the issue and made public pleas for solidarity with immigrant workers.
SMART has stood publicly with its member Abrego Garcia for weeks and urged supporters to donate to help his family.
Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. illegally around 2012. He established a life in Maryland and was later granted protection from deportation by a judge on the grounds he could be harmed by the violent gang Barrio 18 if he was sent back to El Salvador. He was pulled over by immigration officers on March 12 while driving his son, then deported without a hearing three days later.
His wife said she recognized Abrego Garcia in a video the Salvadoran president posted showing deportees being sent to a megaprison.
In their letter Thursday, the labor leaders asked for a meeting with Salvadoran officials by the end of next week to discuss Abrego Garcia’s situation. They said that democracies are strongest “when workers’ rights are respected.”
“The vilification, dehumanization and erosion of rights and due process for immigrants in the United States is a direct threat to the rights of all working people, and we implore nations around the world to resist rather than aid this lawless agenda,” they wrote.
Read the full letter: