Baltimore (AFP) - A Salvadoran man at the center of a row over US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown was rearrested on Monday and is set to be deported to Uganda, officials said.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March and then sent back to the United States, was arrested in Baltimore by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X.

The Department of Homeland Security added that Abrego Garcia, 30, “will be processed for removal to Uganda.”

Abrego Garcia was released last week from a jail in Tennessee, where he is facing human smuggling charges, and allowed to go home to Maryland pending trial.

He was required to check in with ICE on Monday as one of the conditions of his release.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, told a crowd of supporters outside the ICE field office that his client was taken into custody when he turned up for the appointment.

“Shame, shame,” chanted the protestors, who were holding signs reading “Free Kilmar” and “Remove Trump.”

“The notice stated that the reason was an interview,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “Clearly that was false. There was no need for them to take him into ICE detention.”

Sandoval-Moshenberg said a lawsuit had immediately been filed in federal court to prevent Abrego Garcia’s removal to Uganda.

The attempt to deport Abrego Garcia to Uganda adds a new twist to a saga that became a test case for Trump’s harsh crackdown on illegal immigration – and, critics say, his trampling of the law.

- ‘Administrative error’ -

Abrego Garcia had been living in the United States under protected legal status since 2019, when a judge ruled he should not be deported because he could be harmed in his home country.

Then he became one of more than 200 people sent to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison in March as part of Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.

But Justice Department lawyers admitted that the Salvadoran had been wrongly deported due to an “administrative error.”

He was returned to US soil only to be detained again in Tennessee on human smuggling charges.

Abrego Garcia denies any wrongdoing, while the administration alleges he is a violent MS-13 gang member involved in smuggling of other undocumented migrants.

On Thursday, when it became clear that Abrego Garcia would be released the following day, government officials made him a plea offer: remain in custody, plead guilty to human smuggling and be deported to Costa Rica.

He declined the offer.

“That they’re holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty to a crime is such clear evidence that they’re weaponizing the immigration system in a manner that is completely unconstitutional,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

The case has become emblematic of Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration.

Right-wing supporters praise the Republican president’s toughness, but legal scholars and human rights advocates have blasted what they say is a haphazard rush to deport people without even a court hearing, in violation of basic US law.