When Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia returned home late Friday, he was greeted with flowers, metallic streamers and cheers. In videos circulated by immigrant rights groups, he shared long, tearful embraces with his wife, children and other family members. He expressed his gratitude to the people who had not abandoned him.
“Thank you for everything,” Mr. Abrego Garcia told his older brother, Cesar, as he wept in his arms.
But the celebration of his homecoming has been muted. For Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March and returned to the United States in June, the odyssey is not over: The federal government has threatened to deport him to Uganda, his lawyers said. So for now, he and his family are keeping a low profile, with Mr. Abrego Garcia required to use an ankle monitor and largely staying out of the limelight.
Mr. Abrego Garcia, who was in the United States without permission, became a defining face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration when he was deported, prompting outrage from immigrant rights advocates and heightening fear and anxiety among other immigrants in the country.
A sheet metal worker, Mr. Abrego Garcia had been living for years in Prince George’s County in Maryland when he was sent to El Salvador, alongside more than 260 detainees, with no due process. He was sent back in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, where he was held in jail until Friday. His lawyers said the Trump administration’s threat to deport him to Uganda was an attempt to “coerce” him into a guilty plea in the smuggling case.
It was not immediately clear exactly why the Trump administration chose Uganda as the place to potentially send Mr. Abrego Garcia. Initially, federal prosecutors had said that if Mr. Abrego Garcia pleaded guilty to his charges and agreed to stay in custody until Monday, they would send him to Costa Rica, where they said he could live safely, after whatever sentence he is given in that case. But after his lawyers did not agree to keeping him in jail beyond Friday, the administration said if he does not accept their plea deal by Monday, they would start the process to deport him to Uganda.