Hundreds in Tucson hold vigil for man sent to prison in El Salvador

Holding signs that read, “What due process?,” “Who’s next?” and “Fight fascism,” the crowd chanted, “Bring him home!” as passing vehicles on East Fifth Street near Craycroft Road beeped in support.

The Trump administration has so far defied a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court order to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father of three whose lawyers say has not been charged with a crime and who, like hundreds of others, the administration flew to a maximum-security El Salvador prison without due process.

Abrego Garcia had secured protection from deportation to his home country by an immigration judge in 2019, after fleeing El Salvador as a teenager, according to the Associated Press.

Since March 15 the Trump administration has sent hundreds of Venezuelan and Salvadoran men to the notorious prison without due process and without providing evidence of their alleged gang ties. In sworn court declarations, lawyers and family of men held in El Salvador said some were deported simply for having tattoos that had nothing to do with gang affiliation. Human Rights Watch calls the deportation flights “enforced disappearances” to a center known for “abusive conditions.”

Attendees at Wednesday’s Tucson vigil took turns reading the names of men sent from the U.S in the controversial deportation flights last month. In the tradition of Latin American human rights protests, the crowd called out, “presente!” after each name was read.

The incarcerations in a foreign prison without due process “violate every core principle our country is supposed to stand for,” said organizer Liz Oglesby, who teaches Latin American studies at the University of Arizona and said her participation in the vigil was unrelated to her role at UA.

“We stand in solidarity with the families to say ‘Bring them back.’ … We won’t stop until they are released and safe,” Oglesby said.

Tucson poet and writer Raquel Gutierrez, whose mother migrated from El Salvador in the 1970s, read two poems at the vigil, which she said was a “heartening” reflection of Tucson’s history of solidarity with migrants, as the founding place of the Sanctuary Movement, which helped refugees from civil wars in Central America flee to the U.S. on an underground railroad, of church congregations and safe houses, in the 1980s.

Gutierrez said the Trump administration’s and El Salvador government’s failure of due process are “what galvanized this beautiful showing this afternoon.”

“The fact that he (Abrego Garcia) was just a mistake, a glitch in the system, indicates any of us could be subject to the glitches of the system,” she said.

Trump administration officials have admitted Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.” But officials also continue to claim Abrego Garcia is a “terrorist” and member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis wrote in an order last week, “The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived.”

Before Wednesday’s vigil, Catholic priest Ray Riding said it would be a chance to uplift voices “in protest against the injustice, the lies, the inhumanity, the cruelty and illegality of what they (the administration) are doing.”

Riding, a migrant advocate who moved to Tucson last year after 17 years ministering in central Mexico, said dehumanization of migrants underlies Trump’s “illegal” immigration enforcement acts.

“If I dehumanize you as a person, that means I can do anything to you, because you’re not human,” said Riding, a volunteer with the Tucson Samaritans and Salvavision.

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday to advocate for Abrego Garcia’s release.

Last month, U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, told the Arizona Daily Star that President Donald Trump has set a political “trap” for Democrats with his controversial deportation flights to El Salvador. He said at the time he still supported sending migrants to El Salvador, “if they are dangerous” and if they receive due process.

When asked how Democrats should respond to the lack of due process that’s still ongoing, Gallego said, “I honestly don’t know if there is much of anything we can do. I think this is now a matter for the courts.”

On Tuesday, a federal judge said she is ordering top Trump officials to sit for sworn depositions and explain what the administration is doing to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., as the Supreme Court ordered, the AP reported.