By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN and BEN FINLEY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has become the face of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, wants to seek asylum in the United States, his lawyers told a federal judge Wednesday.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia attends a protest rally at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, to support Abrego Garcia. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Abrego Garcia, 30, was detained Monday in Baltimore by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement after leaving a Tennessee jail on Friday. Administration officials have said he’s part of the dangerous MS-13 gang, an allegation Abrego Garcia denies.

The Salvadoran national’s lawyers are fighting the deportation efforts in court, arguing he has the right to express fear of persecution and torture in Uganda. Abrego Garcia has also told immigration authorities he would prefer to be sent to Costa Rica if he must be removed from the U.S.

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He had been denied asylum in 2019 by a U.S. immigration judge because he applied for asylum more than a year after he fled to the U.S. from El Salvador. But the judge did issue an order shielding him from deportation to El Salvador because he faced credible threats of violence from a gang that had terrorized him and his family.

Abrego Garcia was released under federal supervision in 2019 and continued to live with his American wife and children in Maryland until this year. But the Trump administration deported him to a notorious El Salvador prison in March.

The deportation violated the immigration judge’s 2019 order barring his deportation to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia’s wife sued to bring him back. Facing mounting pressure and a U.S. Supreme Court order, the Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. in June, but only to face federal charges of human smuggling.

The Trump administration moved to deport Abrego Garcia again on Monday. He then stated his intent to reopen his immigration case in Maryland and to seek asylum again, his lawyers said Wednesday.

Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia.