MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
What happens next for a man who has been at the center of President Trump's immigration crackdown? Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported from Maryland, where he lives, to a prison in El Salvador. That was in March. For months, the Trump administration resisted a unanimous Supreme Court ruling to, quote, "facilitate" his return. Then last week, abrupt change of course - Abrego Garcia was flown back to the U.S. He is now in a prison in Tennessee, being held on federal charges related to transporting migrants without legal status. Abrego Garcia's attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, saw him yesterday for the first time in this saga, and he is with us now. Welcome.
SIMON SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: Thank you. It's good to be here.
KELLY: How's your client doing?
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: His head is spinning. I mean, he's really surprised. He doesn't understand what's going on. He understood that his case was over and won in 2019, when the immigration judge issued him an order of protection and allowed him to be released from ICE custody. He got a work permit. He was renewing it year after year. He understood that his problems were behind him.
And then, all of a sudden, one day out of nowhere, he gets pulled over in his car, taken into custody, finds himself in El Salvador, the one country where the judge had ordered he could not be sent. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he's meeting with a U.S. senator. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he's being flown back to United States on a private jet and, you know, is being told that his name and his face are known around the world. You know, it's almost like one of those movies where someone wakes up out of a coma.
KELLY: I was going to ask to what extent he is aware that he has become something of a household name in the U.S.
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: Yeah, he didn't have an understanding because he was held completely incommunicado in both of the prisons that he was in, in El Salvador. That is one of the principal human rights violations, is that there's no access to legal counsel, not even a phone call. We sent a lawyer down three times to try to visit with him, and that lawyer was not allowed to visit with him. So he had no idea...
KELLY: Yesterday was the first time you had met him?
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: It was. After, you know, three months of working on his case, it was the first time I actually got to sit down and meet him face to face.
KELLY: So you raise a couple of points that I want to follow up on. One, that for months, the administration had insisted they couldn't bring him back. When did you learn he was being returned to the U.S.?
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: Yeah. I mean, the events on Friday made clear that that was never true. I learned it from ABC News, just like the rest of the nation.
KELLY: You did not get advanced notice from the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, anybody?
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: We did not. I mean, they were digging their heels in. They filed a motion in court insisting that they were powerless to bring him back days after the indictment. So clearly, they already had the wheels in motion, and meanwhile, they were still telling the district court in Maryland, sorry, you know, we're powerless. There's nothing we can do here.
KELLY: His case is unfolding - as people may be getting a sense, there's a number of different cases, civil and criminal, proceeding. Among the fights unfolding around your client is the question of whether he should stay in that prison in Tennessee as he awaits trial. I know a number of other attorneys working on his behalf have asked a judge to release him pre trial. The government is saying no and arguing he's a flight risk. Is he a flight risk?
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: This is a man who's fighting to stay in the United States, right? He's not trying to go anywhere.
KELLY: Meanwhile, you are arguing that officials in the Trump administration should face contempt proceedings, that the administration engaged - and I'm quoting - "in an elaborate all-of-government effort to defy court orders." Mr. Sandoval-Moshenberg, the administration would argue they have now complied with court orders, and - and I'm quoting the Homeland Security assistant secretary of public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, who was on NPR this week - she said, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is now facing a grand jury in Tennessee, "so," she said, "the facts on the ground have changed."
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: So the Supreme Court ordered that the government "ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador." That's a direct quote from the Supreme Court's unanimous 9 to 0 opinion. That is clearly not what happened on Friday. To ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador, he needs to be returned to the state of Maryland.
KELLY: And what is the point, at this point in the proceedings, of going after the Trump administration with contempt proceedings?
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: I think that when lawyers lie to the judge and when lawyers lie under oath at a deposition and when government officials lie under oath at a deposition, they need to be held to account whether or not you agree that they ultimately complied with the judge's order, which they didn't. But even if they, you know, belatedly do, that does not excuse two months of ignoring court orders while a man is locked up behind bars in a foreign country. Those things need to be held to account.
KELLY: What do you see as the broader stakes here for everyone who lives in the U.S.?
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: The government has decided to make this individual into the devil incarnate. Kilmar Abrego Garcia never chose to be the center of a nationwide, you know, cause celebre, right? The government all along has been the one that have (ph) chosen to do that. They made a simple mistake. It happens from time to time. But instead of simply fixing that mistake - maybe an apology would have been nice, but I never expected that - instead of simply fixing the mistake, they decided to go absolutely nuclear on him, and that continues today. And what that shows is that can happen to anyone. If it can happen to him, it can happen to any one of us.
KELLY: Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg is one of the attorneys representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Thank you.
SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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