Audio: Kilmar Abrego Garcia's wife asked judge for protection from domestic abuse

 

Audio obtained by USA TODAY from a 2020 court hearing in Maryland shows Jennifer Vasquez Sura pleading with a judge for temporary protection from her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the wrongfully deported Salvadoran migrant at the center of a deportation storm.

Abrego Garcia “grabbed me from my hair, and then he slapped me,” Vasquez Sura said in her 2020 testimony to a judge.

For weeks, the White House and Homeland Security officials have defended deporting the 29-year-old Maryland father to a Salvadoran prison, after acknowledging in court that it was done in error and against an immigration judge's court order.

The Trump administration insists he is a member of the MS-13 gang, but a federal judge has questioned the strength of the government's evidence. Abrego Garcia denies being a gang member and has no criminal convictions.

Officials have recently turned to releasing information about his alleged domestic abuse. The audio file is from one of those court hearings.

"Recently an audio clip of a civil court hearing related to the protection order I filed became public. I previously acknowledged the protection order and will again address a personal and painful part of mine and Kilmar’s life. Neither of us were in a good place at that time," Vasquez Sura told USA TODAY in a May 1 statement.

She added: "My husband was traumatized from the time he spent in ICE detention and we were in the throes of COVID. Like many couples, we were caring for our children with barely enough to get by. All of those factors contributed to the actions which caused me to seek the protective order."

On April 16, DHS officials distributed a restraining order petition from 2021. On April 30, a 2020 petition to a Maryland court was released by DHS depicting more allegations of violence against Abrego Garcia.

In the August 2020 recording before Judge Ada Clark-Edwards, Vasquez Sura describes in detail how Abrego Garcia was detained and in ICE custody through her 2019 pregnancy but returned home a changed person.

“Once he came out, maybe like a month after he was out, he changed a lot with me and my kids,” Vasquez Sura told the judge. “He would yell at them, yell at me for anything, and any little thing.””

In 2021, Vasquez Sura filed for a protection order a second time, citing instances of violence in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Abrego Garcia “punched and scratched” Vasquez Sura, ripped off her shirt and grabbed and bruised her, she said in 2021.

Police never charged Abrego Garcia with domestic violence.

Abrego Garcia, a Maryland sheet metal worker, was pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while driving with his 5-year-old son on March 12. Three days later, he was deported to a prison for terrorists in his native El Salvador.

In 2019, an immigration judge ruled Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador because he had a “well-grounded fear of future persecution.”

A U.S. district judge ordered the Trump administration to return him. The U.S. Supreme Court pared down that order, ordering the administration to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's release.

Abrego Garcia: A popular cause

Abrego Garcia's wrongful deportation and the administration's refusal to return him to the U.S. have made him a focal point for opposition to the Trump administration's program of mass deportations.