The immigration attorneys who filed both lawsuits against the federal government by Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the citizen of El Salvador charged with human smuggling, said in a Tuesday response to a filing by government attorneys that their client is ready for an “immediate” removal to Costa Rica, if the government consents to send him to the Central American nation.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys stated their client’s willingness to be deported to Costa Rica while reasserting their claim that federal immigration authorities have violated the law by attempting to deport their client to nations other than Costa Rica, where Abrego Garcia has twice identified as his preferred country for removal, despite also claiming he fears persecution or torture if deported there.
“If the Government wished to remove Petitioner, it could do so immediately to Costa Rica,” Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote, claiming that the Trump administration has “disregarded” their client’s designation of Costa Rica as his preferred nation for removal.
Costa Rica was first identified by the El Salvadoran’s criminal defense attorneys in July, when his Nashville-based lawyer was negotiating a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, which specified that it would need a preferred nation for removal in order to obtain diplomatic assurances from a foreign government.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys replied that their client preferred removal to Costa Rica, and the U.S. Department of State later obtained a letter from that nation’s government, pledging he would be granted residency or citizenship status after his arrival.
His attorneys noted this in the filing, describing Costa Rica as “a country that has provided explicit assurances that it will accept Petitioner and prevent his re-deportation to El Salvador.”
Despite the breakdown of the plea agreement that would have seen Abrego Garcia deported to Costa Rica, his attorney made similar comments about Costa Rica in August.
“They say that their goal is to get him out of the country as quickly as possible,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg. “There’s already an offer on the table from Costa Rica for refugee status in that country, and a guarantee that Costa Rica will not deport him on to El Salvador.”
Sandoval-Moshenberg confirmed, “If they want to get him out as quickly as possible, we could work that out tomorrow.”
The rest of the filing responds to the government’s recent request for the Obama-appointed judge overseeing the lawsuits to disregard much of Abrego Garcia’s requests, as they claimed many of his immigration arguments are being addressed by other courts, including immigration and appellate courts, while his effort to avoid removal to Uganda is no longer necessary, as the government now seeks to deport him to Eswatini, a landlocked African nation.
Abrego Garcia is currently located at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center in Pennsylvania, where he was moved last week after previously being detained at a Virginia facility. He briefly left federal custody in August, when a federal magistrate judge in Tennessee granted him pretrial release for his federal human smuggling case.
The criminal case against Abrego Garcia stems from his November 2022 traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, which The Tennessee Star first reported in April. A spokesman for THP later told The Star that Abrego Garcia was released at the instruction of the “Biden-era FBI,” despite a document released by the Trump administration confirming troopers suspected human trafficking.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His case is scheduled to reach trial in January 2026.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
He gave up any right to choose where to go when he declared that he would NOT go to El Salvador where he rightly belongs.