Advocacy organizations warn ‘we are all Kilmar'; pledge to fight for immigrant rights
Lydia Walther-Rodriguez, Chief of Organizing and Leadership Development for CASA Maryland, speaks during a press conference before Kilmar Abrego Garcia's arraignment and detention hearing in Nashville, Tenn. on June 13, 2025. (Photo: Cassandra Stephenson/Tennessee Lookout)
Chants of 'Todos somos Kilmar' — 'we are all Kilmar' — punctuated a gathering of immigrant, labor, faith and civil rights organizations who gathered at a downtown Nashville church Friday ahead of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's arraignment.
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran native living in Maryland, was detained after a traffic stop in March and then deported to a Salvadoran prison under accusations of being a member of the MS-13 criminal gang.
His deportation — which a Trump administration attorney admitted was done in error — has become a lightning rod for public opposition to the administration's immigration policies.
'Let's be clear: We are fighting because they are continuing to call this an administrative error, but there's nothing administrative about destroying a family, and this is not an error,' Lydia Walther-Rodriguez, a leader with immigrant advocacy group CASA Maryland, said.
'This is an intentional attack to Black and brown communities. Not just in Maryland, but all throughout this country, they are continuing to fight to erase us, and we must continue to stand up and resist,' she said.
Abrego Garcia came to the United States illegally as a teenager. A 2019 immigration court order barred the government from sending him back to El Salvador, where he said he feared persecution.
The El Salvador government returned Abrego Garcia to the United States in June to face human smuggling charges issued in a grand jury indictment in late May. The charges stem from a 2022 incident when the Tennessee Highway Patrol pulled over Abrego Garcia's SUV — which had nine Hispanic men inside — for speeding.
He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment at a Nashville federal courthouse Friday.
The group of organizations that met on the steps of the First Lutheran Church also included the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), SEIU Local 205, Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle Tennessee and The Equity Alliance.
Vonda McDaniel, president of the Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, demanded fair treatment for Abrego Garcia, saying his case will not 'disappear in the shadows of a courtroom.' She also questioned the legitimacy of the charges against him, which were filed after his deportation.
'This is a clear attempt to criminalize Kilmar retroactively in order to justify what they did to him illegally, and to intimidate other immigrants (and) workers who might dare to fight back when their rights are violated … Today, we stand before you to demand justice, not vengeance,' McDaniel said.
TIRRC Executive Director Lisa Sherman Luna spoke of the Tennessee legislature's recent actions, including a law that created an immigration enforcement division that is exempt from public records and created criminal penalties for local elected officials who 'adopt sanctuary policies.' Another law created a new crime for harboring or hiding immigrants without legal immigration status 'for the purpose … of private financial gain.'
'What happened to Kilmar Garcia is a chilling example of what could happen to any one of us, because it's exactly what happens when those in power put themselves above the law, when court orders are ignored, when people are disappeared, when due process is erased,' she said. 'Right now, immigrants are being used as pawns in a broader assault on our democracy.'
Sherman Luna said Nashville specifically has been under 'full-scale assault' since ICE detained around 200 people, most of whom had no criminal records, from the city's most diverse neighborhoods in May.
U.S. 'border czar' Tom Homan, U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Trump administration officials have since denounced Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell for condemning the immigration detention sweep.
'There will be repercussions' Homeland Security official targets Nashville mayor over immigration
After the detainments, O'Connell revised a 2019 executive order that requires some city employees to report interactions with federal immigration officials to the mayor's office, shortening the original 3-day timeframe to 24 hours. The mayor's office posted records of these reports, which inadvertently included the names of three federal immigration officials and one official's first name, according to O'Connell's administration. The posts were later removed.
Tennessee GOP leaders have accused O'Connell of endangering immigration officials and interfering with immigration enforcement.
O'Connell now faces an investigation by a U.S. Congressional committee, and Tennessee Republican state lawmakers have proposed legislation that would make it a felony for public officials to release immigration officers' names. The bill would also remove state and local officials from office.
'They criminalized the ability of local elected officials to protect immigrant residents, and now they're trying to make it a crime to even release the names of ICE officers, people with immense power operating without any public oversight,' Sherman Luna said. 'This is what governments do when they know they're acting outside of the law, when they're trampling on our rights (and) they want to do it with total impunity.'
District 17 Metro Nashville Council member Terry Vo, who chairs the Immigrant Caucus, said the state legislature 'has already stripped Tennessee cities of the right to take care of our people, from banning sanctuary policies to restricting (minimum wage increases) and to blocking worker protections.'
Cities in Tennessee and throughout the nation, she said, cannot 'comply in advance.'
'Let's not forget the freedoms we enjoy now were not gifted to us,' Vo said. 'They were fought for. They were sacrificed for.'
Tequila Johnson, co-founder and vice president of The Equity Alliance, said it's the same system that 'locks up Black bodies' and 'is deporting immigrant families.'
'We owe it to our ancestors … to the people who died, who fought for these rights, to continue fighting,' Johnson said. 'Because just because hate isn't knocking at your door right now, doesn't mean it's not on your street.'
Anita Wadhwani contributed.
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man whose illegal deportation became a high-profile symbol of President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration-enforcement policies, may not be held in jail pending trial on immigrant smuggling charges he was abruptly returned to the U.S. to face earlier this month, a federal magistrate judge ruled Sunday. Despite the decision by Nashville-based U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes, Abrego is unlikely to be released anytime soon. The Justice Department immediately filed an appeal and there is an order to keep him in immigration custody, at least in the near term. Still, the ruling is a blow to the nascent criminal case, which alleges Abrego regularly drove undocumented immigrants across the U.S. for years as part of an international human smuggling ring. Holmes said prosecutors failed to produce enough plausible evidence that Abrego posed a danger to the community, was likely to flee or that he victimized minors while he allegedly transported immigrants across the country. And she repeatedly described the evidence presented by prosecutors as strained, unreliable and contradictory. While Trump has insisted that Abrego is a member of the violent MS-13 gang, Holmes said the proof prosecutors presented of his gang ties during a daylong court hearing in Nashville earlier this month didn't amount to much. 'Given the volume of resources committed to the government's investigation of Abrego since April 2025…the Court supposes that if timely, more specific, concrete evidence exists of Abrego's alleged MS-13 gang membership or a consistent pattern of intentional conduct designed to threaten or intimidate specific individuals, the government would have offered that evidence,' the judge wrote. Holmes also noted that, while MS-13 has been tied by the government to violent crimes and a variety of other offenses, 'Abrego has no reported criminal history of any kind.' In fact, Holmes said the contention that Abrego was in the gang at all was built on 'double hearsay' that was at times inconsistent. Holmes repeatedly noted that the government's case for detaining Abrego pending trial was built upon multiple layers of hearsay that sometimes 'defy common sense' and were often drawn from statements of cooperating witnesses with extensive criminal history who are seeking favors from federal prosecutors. Prosecutors said Abrego might flee because he could effectively receive a life sentence, based on the possibility of up to 10 years in prison for each immigrant he transported. But the judge said the prosecution's calculation was wrong, and she observed that past sentences for charges similar to Abrego's were not nearly that steep, averaging around 12 months. 'The Court is unconvinced that the potential sentence Abrego faces if convicted as charged is so extraordinary as to compel finding that this case involves a serious risk of flight,' Holmes wrote. Prosecutors also sought Abrego's pretrial detention based on claims that his alleged crimes involved minors. A Homeland Security Investigation agent testified that 'cooperators' said Abrego drove an SUV-loaded with undocumented immigrants from Houston to Maryland sometimes as often as three to four times a week with his own children in the vehicle, but Holmes said the accounts did not seem plausible. 'The sheer number of hours that would be required to maintain this schedule, which would consistently be more than 120 hours per week of driving time, approach physical impossibility,' the judge wrote. A Justice Department spokesperson had no immediate comment. But federal prosecutors quickly appealed Holmes' ruling to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, the Obama-appointed trial judge ultimately slated to preside over the case. The ruling is the latest twist in a saga that has resulted in multiple black eyes for Trump's mass deportation policy, including a rebuke from the Supreme Court and a slew of federal judges who found Abrego was denied due process when he was summarily deported to his native country in March. Abrego was among hundreds of immigrants abruptly arrested and delivered to El Salvador on three flights that also included people targeted by Trump under an unprecedented invocation of wartime deportation powers. Though Abrego wasn't among that group, the administration labeled him as an MS-13 member and said he was not entitled to much, if any, due process as a result of Trump's determination. 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Abrego's defense lawyers contend the criminal charges amount to retaliation for the attention his case drew to the Trump administration's hastily executed deportation of hundreds of men to a notorious, anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador in March. Prosecutors insist that Abrego will remain in immigration custody even if he's released to await trial on the criminal charges. However, if that were the case, he could seek bond from an immigration judge.
