Immigration officials in the United States say they intend to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, according to a court filing, in what the man’s legal team describes as an act of “vindictiveness” by US President Donald Trump’s administration.

The court filing on Saturday said the idea of sending Abrego Garcia to Uganda came after he declined an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges.

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He has pleaded not guilty and asked the judge to dismiss the case, claiming that it is an attempt to punish him for challenging his deportation from the US to El Salvador earlier this year.

Abrego Garcia’s case has become a flashpoint in Trump’s hardline, anti-immigration agenda after the Salvadoran national was mistakenly deported in March.

Facing a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the US in June, only to detain him on human smuggling charges.

The Costa Rica offer came late on Thursday, after it was clear that Abrego Garcia would likely be released from a Tennessee jail the following day.

Abrego Garcia declined to extend his stay in jail and was released on Friday to await trial in Maryland with his family.

Later that day, the US Department of Homeland Security notified his lawyers that he would be deported to Uganda and should report to immigration authorities on Monday.

“The government immediately responded to Mr Abrego’s release with outrage,” Saturday’s filing by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers reads.

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“Despite having requested and received assurances from the government of Costa Rica that Mr Abrego would be accepted there, within minutes of his release from pretrial custody, an ICE representative informed Mr Abrego’s counsel that the government intended to deport Mr Abrego to Uganda and ordered him to report to ICE’s Baltimore Field Office Monday morning.”

The filing also accuses US officials of “using their collective powers to force Mr Abrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat”.

“It is difficult to imagine a path the government could have taken that would have better emphasized its vindictiveness,” it says.

Although Abrego Garcia was deemed eligible for pretrial release, he had remained in jail at the request of his lawyers, who feared the Trump administration could try to immediately deport him again if he were freed.

Those fears were somewhat allayed by a recent ruling in a separate case in Maryland, which requires immigration officials to allow Abrego Garcia time to mount a defence.

Questions on due process

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

He then became one of more than 200 people sent to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison as part of Trump’s crackdown on migrants and asylum seekers in the US.

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

Abrego Garcia – who denies any wrongdoing – now stands accused of involvement in smuggling undocumented migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and other countries into the US between 2016 and earlier this year.

His trial in his human smuggling case is set to begin in January 2027.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said in a social media post on Saturday that “no matter what you think about Mr Abrego Garcia, if you believe in due process, you should be infuriated” by the effort to send him to Uganda.

“The Trump admin is threatening to dump him in Africa as punishment for not pleading guilty to criminal charges they brought to avoid complying with a court order,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X.

The Trump administration has defended its policies, saying the US president was elected on a promise to carry out the “largest deportation operation” in the country’s history.

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But Washington’s push to deport people has drawn widespread criticism, with removals to third countries, in particular, fuelling fears that those being sent abroad could face human rights abuses and other dangers.

Last month, the Trump administration sent eight men to South Sudan, a country gripped by political instability and violence.