Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s chilling tale of beatings inside El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison has lit up Washington’s immigration fight this week alone. Yet leaked surveillance clips show the Maryland migrant grinning, strolling and even shaking hands on his way out of custody.
As reported by the Daily Mail, President Nayib Bukele posted the footage online to dispute claims that guards tortured Garcia and starved him of sleep. Bukele accused critics of inventing stories to sabotage his gang-crackdown policies and embarrass Donald Trump.
Clips show Garcia sharing cocktails with Senator Chris Van Hollen a week after CECOT and later gardening, fishing and playing soccer at the Centro Industrial prison. Supporters say bruises fade quickly; prosecutors insist the images expose wholesale exaggeration.
Garcia, 34, was deported on March 15 2020 under Trump’s border crackdown despite a 2019 immigration-judge ruling that his gang-plagued hometown made removal unsafe. Federal officials later blamed an administrative error, but by then he had already spent weeks inside CECOT, a fortress for the country’s most violent gang members.
In court filings, Garcia says guards kicked him, chained him in stress positions and forced him to stand under lights that never shut off. He claims he lost more than 30 pounds in two weeks and feared death when inmates whispered threats through the bars.
Bukele’s montage counters that narrative by showing Garcia boarding a U.S.-bound flight with no visible injuries and later greeting Salvadoran officials with an easy smile. He tweeted that critics ‘protect criminals’ and ignore plummeting murder rates.
Senator Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, visited the Centro Industrial facility on April 18 and later told reporters he ‘did not’ sense any abuse when he met Garcia. Bukele hailed the comment as bipartisan proof the allegations are false.
Advocates argue a two-hour tour cannot reveal life during unmonitored nights at the massive compound. They note that Salvadoran officials have faced previous accusations of staging sanitized visits for foreign dignitaries and cameras.
Advocates who opposed his 2020 removal say the video may skip moments when cameras were off or inmates hidden. Bukele’s office has not released continuous raw footage, and critics say that decision fuels doubt.
Garcia and his wife have sued the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, seeking damages and an order barring any future deportation to El Salvador. Their complaint argues that torture at CECOT makes removal illegal under U.S. statute.
Justice Department lawyers say they will first prosecute Garcia in Tennessee, where he faces human-smuggling charges linked to a 2022 investigation. Defense lawyers instead prefer continued custody, fearing Homeland Security might whisk him away again.
Prosecutors have floated moving him to a ‘third country’ rather than back to El Salvador if deportation eventually proceeds, a scenario that could sidestep the super-prison dispute. Garcia’s lawyers say gangs operate regionally and could find him anywhere.
Two portraits now compete: Garcia the battered detainee, describing beatings and starvation, and Garcia the relaxed traveler, clinking glasses with a U.S. senator days later. Both sides brandish selective videos and witness statements, leaving judges to determine which picture is real and which is performance.
If jurors believe the torture narrative, damages could reach millions and the United States would be barred from sending him anywhere Bukele controls. Should the video prevail, Garcia could serve a U.S. sentence and still be expelled, a precedent likely to chill similar lawsuits from other deportees.
For now, the migrant remains in a Tennessee cell, the tapes circling the internet worldwide and the affidavit gathering signatures tonight. A trial schedule could come within months, but the clash between Bukele’s cameras and Garcia’s bruises is destined to echo loudly through U.S. politics and global headlines far longer.