🌊 Everything We Know About Kilmar Abrego Garcia

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By Max Frost

At the start of his life, few things seemed less likely than Kilmar Abrego Garcia ending up at the center of one of America’s most contentious political debates. 

After all, he wasn’t born in Washington, DC, or anywhere else in the US for that matter. Nor was he born in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other country at the center of America’s attention. Rather, he was born in the midst of a gang war in El Salvador’s capital city, San Salvador. 

According to court documents, Garcia was raised by a mother who sold pupusas, the country’s staple food of meat, bean, and cheese-stuffed corn cakes. And throughout Garcia’s childhood, he helped make and deliver these foods – all while a gang war raged around him. 

That war was between Barrio 18 and MS-13, gangs that had formed among Central American migrants in Los Angeles in the 1980s. When those migrants were deported back to Latin America, they brought their gangs with them. In El Salvador, they waged a vicious battle to control turf and the businesses and drug trade that came with it. 

In the mid-1990s, around the time of Garcia’s birth, El Salvador had a murder rate of nearly 140 per 100,000, roughly triple that of the most murderous country today (Jamaica). Murders were a product of gangs fighting each other and killing any who opposed them, for example by refusing to pay extortion money. 

This is where today’s political dispute begins: According to Garcia’s lawyers, his family faced repeated threats from local gangs who demanded payment from their pupusa shop. In order to protect Garcia, the family sent him to America – or so his lawyers say. 

The Trump Administration, meanwhile, says Garcia was not a victim of the gangs, but one of their members, for reasons laid out below.

Editor’s Note

Thanks for reading! We want to hear what you think: Do you buy that Garcia is a gang member? Even if he is, should his deportation be reversed? Is the administration violating the law or reestablishing it? Let us know by replying to this email.

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That’s all for today — see you tomorrow.

–Max and Max