Kilmar is free – A state loses control – and two families pay the price: The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the renewed arrest of Melissa Tran

Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s name has come to symbolize an immigration system that no longer understands its own decisions. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has ordered that the Salvadoran national be released from ICE custody immediately. “Respondents shall release Abrego Garcia from ICE custody immediately,” the two-page order from the federal court in the District of Maryland states. A single sentence that carries the weight of an entire case.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was flown to El Salvador in March along with hundreds of other people, labeled as alleged members of MS-13 and the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua. We were able to disprove the claim that he, as Trump alleged, had MS-13 tattoos on his hands. In fact, it was proven that the images Trump presented were falsifications. See our article: “The fist, the photo, and the lie – How Trump replaces the law with a misleading image” – at the link: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/die-faust-das-foto-und-die-luege-wie-trump-das-recht-mit-einem-irrefuehrenden-bild-ersetzt/

But his case stood out: He had lived in Maryland for more than ten years, worked as a sheet metal worker, held a valid work permit, and was protected by a court order barring deportation. Yet he was placed on a flight to a country where he had never committed a crime. ICE blamed a “clerical error”. The Trump administration claimed he was part of a gang structure. Abrego Garcia denies this. The accusations were nothing short of grotesque.

A warning must be issued here: A warning must be issued here: The material from CECOT contained in the video documents extreme forms of human degradation. It is not for the faint-hearted – and yet an unfiltered reflection of what happens when human beings are no longer seen as individuals with inherent dignity but only as threats, as statistics, as variables to be eliminated in an equation of fear. In Nayib Bukele’s torture hell CECOT – this architectural monument of dehumanization in El Salvador – tens of thousands exist under conditions that mock every achievement of civilization. The partially covert recordings from this complex show packed bodies, naked people lined up like livestock before slaughter, human beings stripped of individuality and fused into an amorphous mass of misery. This is hell on earth.

While he was held in a Salvadoran prison for terrorism suspects, a federal grand jury in Nashville indicted him on May 21 for alleged smuggling offenses. The accusations are said to cover a period from 2016 to 2025. Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty. In June he was brought back to the United States – only to be arrested again shortly after and placed back in immigration detention. This back and forth does not merely describe institutional failure, but an attitude that turns people into pieces on a board.

Point 2: Respondents shall release Abrego Garcia from ICE custody immediately.

Now Judge Paula Xinis has ordered his release. But free does not mean safe in such cases. It means that a man who was sent in the wrong direction twice by a system can breathe again – at least until the next decision.

Meanwhile, a second case in Maryland shows how narrow the boundary between everyday life and government intervention has become. Mong “Melissa” Tuyen Thi Tran, a mother, business owner, and rooted in Hagerstown for decades, was taken back into ICE custody. On November 14 – only one month after being released from a five-month detention – the authorities picked her up again. Everything was done to stop an old deportation order from July 1995. But Vietnam had refused for decades to accept individuals who arrived in the United States before July 1995. The removal order therefore sat dormant for more than 20 years. Why Vietnam suddenly agreed to take her now remains unexplained. The Vietnamese embassy in Washington did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

On November 17, Tran called a friend to say she expected to be placed on a plane to Vietnam that day. Through tears, she said she was exhausted from living in constant fear of being taken away from her family again. “It is sad, terribly sad for her and her children. But I think she is almost relieved to no longer live in the constant fear of ‘When will they snatch me and take me away from my family’, it is over now,” said family friend Tina Nash. A sentence that weighs heavier than any legal category.

“The trip was beyond exhausting,” Tran wrote in a text message shared with us. “We were shackled the whole way… I felt like we were treated worse than animals.”

Both cases expose what this system has long lost: reliability. A state that first deports a man in error, then brings him back, then arrests him again, or places a mother in and out of detention in shifting intervals, is not a state demonstrating control. It demonstrates uncertainty, contradiction, and a treatment of human beings that falls far short of what a democracy claims for itself.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is now free. Melissa Tran is possibly on a flight to a country she has not known since childhood. For their families, the same terrifying moment remains: that a door opens and everyday life collapses into an emergency that has nothing to do with law but everything to do with power. We will continue to fight in both cases and of course now put everything possible in motion to ensure that Melissa can return to her family as quickly as possible. The fight continues, day by day, case by case.

To be continued .....