Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, said she and her children have been moved to a safe house after the Department of Homeland Security posted a court document on social media that included their home address.
“I don’t feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions,” Vasquez Sura told The Washington Post in an interview published Tuesday.
As the Trump administration released documents detailing its case against Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father with protected status who officials admitted was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, DHS last week posted a copy of a civil protective order granted to his wife in 2021.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a history of violence and was not the upstanding ‘Maryland Man’ the media has portrayed him as,” the agency wrote in a post on X.
The family’s home address and other personal information about the couple was not redacted. The Department of Homeland Security told MSNBC that the documents it posted are publicly accessible.
The family’s home address and other personal information about the couple was not redacted.
In a statement last week, Vasquez Sura revealed her experience with domestic violence in a previous relationship and said she sought the protective order after a disagreement with Abrego Garcia “in case things escalated.”
“Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process,” she said. “No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. That is not a justification for ICE’s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation.”
According to the Post, Abrego Garcia had struck her during an argument in their car in 2021. Vasquez Sura attributed it to the mounting pressure they were facing while raising three children, including their youngest son, who is nonverbal and autistic, as well as lingering trauma from Abrego Garcia’s seven-month detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2019. (That detention is now the central focus of the Trump administration’s case against him.)
“Look, Kilmar is not perfect — nobody is,” Vasquez Sura told the Post. “Day by day, you grow. Every day, you learn. And he was trying his best for me, for our kids, for our future.” Abrego Garcia’s case is arguably the most high-profile one among the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation efforts. The government has repeatedly accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, allegations that his lawyer and Vasquez Sura have vehemently denied. As the legal battle over his removal and court-ordered return to the U.S. plays out, Trump officials — and even Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele — have portrayed Abrego Garcia as a violent gang member, a terrorist and a less-than-stellar husband and father. Meanwhile, Vasquez Sura has continued to advocate for his return. “Enough is enough,” she told reporters last week. “My family can’t be robbed from another day without seeing Kilmar. This administration has already taken so much from my children, from Kilmar’s mother, brother, sisters and me.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
Latest Post
Recommended
