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act22.bsky.social
@act22.bsky.social
26 followers 89 following 4 posts
Immigration Lawyer in DMV area. Originally from Chicago. 🇲🇽👩🏽‍⚖️✡️♓️🌌
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reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
Here's how Mr. Abrego got accused of being an MS-13 member.

In 2019, he shows up to a Home Depot looking for day labor. He chats with other guys there. Local cops show up and arrest everyone. He's interrogated, denies gang claims. Local cops declare that he's in a gang anyway. He gets sent to ICE.
On March 28, 2019, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia went to a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland to solicit employment. When he arrived, he joined three other young men who were also at Home Depot soliciting employment, two of whom he recognized from prior occasions at the Home Depot, though he had never interacted with them in any other context. The young men proceeded to chat to pass the time. 26. At 2:27 PM, while the four of them were chatting, a detective from the Hyattsville City Police approached the group. The detective did not speak to Plaintiff Abrego Garcia, but only one of the other men. Soon thereafter, officers from Prince George County Police Department (“PGPD”) arrived on the scene and proceeded to handcuff all four young men, including Plaintiff Abrego Garcia. At no point did police explain why they were arresting Plaintiff Abrego Garcia, nor was Plaintiff Abrego Garcia ever charged with any crime. This was Plaintiff Abrego Garcia’s first and only time in state custody 27. At the police station, the four young men were placed into different rooms and questioned. Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was asked if he was a gang member; when he told police he was not, they said that they did not believe him and repeatedly demanded that he provide information about other gang members. The police told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that he would be released if he cooperated, but he repeatedly explained that he did not have any information to give because he did not know anything. 28. Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was then transferred to another room and told that ICE officers would be coming to take him into federal immigration custody. Eventually, ICE officers arrived and took Plaintiff Abrego Garcia into detention. 30. On April 24, 2019, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia appeared for his first hearing in immigration court. Through counsel, he moved for release on bond pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), submitting over seventy pages of evidence in support thereof. ICE opposed a change in custody status, arguing that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia presented a danger to the community because local police had supposedly “verified” that he is an active gang member. 31. In support thereof, ICE offered a Gang Field Interview Sheet (“GFIS”) generated by PGPD. The GFIS explained that the only reason to believe Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was a gang member was that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique. The GFIS had been entered into PGPD’s database at 6:47 PM, approximately four hours after police met Plaintiff Abrego Garcia for the first time. 32. According to the Department of Justice and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, the “Westerns” clique operates in Brentwood, Long Island, in New York, a state that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia has never lived in. 33. The attorney for Plaintiff Abrego Garcia subsequently made multiple attempts to obtain additional information from law enforcement concerning these allegations. PGPD indicated that it did not have any incident report related to the Home Deport episode at all, nor did the Department have any incident reports containing his name. The Hyattsville City Police Department (“HCPD”), on the other hand, confirmed it had an incident report for the Home Depot incident, but that only 3 people were named and Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was not one of them, nor did it have any other incident reports with his name in its database. His attorney also contacted the PGPD Inspector General requesting to speak to the detective who authored the GFIS sheet, but was informed that the detective had been suspended. A request to speak to other officers in the Gang Unit was declined.
April 1, 2025 at 12:16 PM
act22.bsky.social
Decided we’d do tea instead! And ended up asking each other who/what we are doing this work for…worth missing yoga!
November 12, 2024 at 3:47 AM