On Wednesday night, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed a proposed amended complaint that somehow managed to be both a bombshell and a confirmation of what we already knew: While in El Salvador’s barbaric CECOT prison, Garcia was subjected to abuse and torture.
The amended complaint details Garcia’s arrival at CECOT, where he and other detainees were told, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.”
Garcia was forced to strip and was kicked and hit while he changed clothes, then struck with wooden batons as he was marched to his cell. He and 20 others were forced to kneel for 9 hours overnight, and guards would strike anyone who fell. Garcia was denied bathroom access and forced to soil himself. Bright lights stayed on 24 hours every day to prevent detainees from sleeping—not that there was much of a chance of that, as they slept on metal bunks with no mattresses.
CECOT officials, knowing that Garcia was deported to El Salvador by mistake and that he was a target of MS-13 gang members, would threaten to transfer him to a cell with gang members who would “tear” him apart.
Forced into stress positions, refused access to bathrooms, prevented from sleeping ,forced to strip, struck with batons, threatened with violence from other detainees—these are all things that happened at Abu Ghraib, the notoriously brutal Iraqi facility that the United States used as a military prison during the war.
Garcia’s amended complaint is careful to speak only for him, as he was not held in the same cell block as the 200 Venezuelans who were deported at the same time. That said, it’s no secret that CECOT’s overall conditions are horrible and humiliating—and that’s the entire point.
Videos from inside show mattress-free bunks and men crammed into overcrowded cells and forced to bathe in open structures in front of guards and other detainees. But it hasn’t been possible to verify the physical abuse or torture of people in the facility because there is no access to detainees or anyone who has been released.
Human rights groups have documented torture, forced confessions, and deprivation of necessities like food, health care, and hygiene in El Salvador’s two dozen other prisons that they have been able to access, and the United States even has a 2023 government report saying the same thing.
While Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem may love doing cosplay tough-guy media hits in front of CECOT’s overcrowded cells, she’s also insisted that the detainees sent to CECOT somehow receive terrific care. She told the Wall Street Journal that detainees “have mattresses, they have full meals,” and “receive time for exercise and are getting medical checks on a regular basis.”
The Trump administration knew full well that if Garcia were released from CECOT, he would be able to speak freely about the abuses he suffered, proving Noem to be lying. Seeing Garcia’s allegations illuminates why the Trump administration has gone to such lengths to refuse to return Garcia—even after admitting that sending him to El Salvador was an accident.
And it’s not just that the Trump administration stonewalled and feigned inability to return Garcia, absurdly insisting that it did not have the authority to do so. It also sought to keep characterizing him as impossibly dangerous as a way to justify leaving him in CECOT.
The Department of Justice tried to force the attorney handling the case, Erez Reuveni, to argue in court that Garcia was a terrorist. Reuveni refused, saying that there was no evidence of that, and when he subsequently refused to sign an appellate brief with that same claim, he was fired.
Once the Trump administration reversed course and brought Garcia home, it insisted that it did so only because Garcia was now facing bogus criminal charges. Now, according to the DOJ, Garcia was some sort of leading smuggler for MS-13, transporting violent gang members all around the United States.
The Trump administration is also rewarding their star witness against Garcia, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, with a release from prison and protection from deportation so he can testify against Garcia. Unlike Garcia, Reyes has multiple felony convictions, including for smuggling immigrants, and has re-entered the United States without authorization multiple times.
While Garcia awaits his criminal trial, his lawyers had to take the unusual step of asking the judge to keep their client incarcerated out of concern that, if Garcia were released, the Trump administration would immediately deport him again. The Trump administration has already told the court that no matter the result of the criminal case, Garcia will be deported.
Bringing overblown criminal charges against Garcia doesn’t just serve to undercut his credibility about the allegations the government surely knew he would make once he was freed from CECOT. Moving things to criminal court also boxes in Garcia, who can now only bring this information to light if he testifies about it, which also exposes him to cross-examination by the government.
The government will presumably oppose Garcia’s motion to amend his complaint, but it’s up to the judge to decide whether to allow it.
But Garcia’s allegations are already out there, shining a light on the worst recesses of the Trump administration. And there’s nothing the administration can do to unring that bell.