Model Citizen: Kilmar Armando Ábrego García

Baltimore, MD—It’s been a whirlwind of a year for Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, who now goes by Ábrego García—dropping his first name to make people feel safer. He’s traveled from country to country, even meeting with Sen. Chris Van Hollen in El Salvador—possibly for a Bitcoin conference. But now, family and friends back in Maryland want him to come home.

“The Trump admin has been flying him all over the place, and we want him back,” said García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who’s face looks a little better than the last time we saw her in court. “I can’t wait for him to come home,” she said as she blinked in a really weird pattern.

Republicans, who have been trying to allege that the El Salvadoran isn’t a US citizen, don’t understand why anyone would want him back.

“He trafficked people, he beat his wife, he’s a gangbanger from El Salvador!” one tweet online read, echoing a lot of the far right on X. Even Elon Musk, owner of X, made statements disparaging García.

“I don’t know what they’re talking about,” said Brian Kilmeade, 35, Garcia’s neighbor in a suburb of Baltimore. “He’s always bringing people to parties. If you need a lady to help you out with something at your house, he always had someone to help you…no questions asked.”

“Yeah, he even taught us how to shoot and bought most of us our first guns,” added another neighbor, 42 year old Chuck Finch. “We formed a sort of neighborhood watch. Kil…I mean Abrego would sell things and we’d keep watch to make sure all of the transactions were safe. We made a little money for the neighborhood to make some improvements.”

“We’d like him to come home soon because we’ve been waiting to give him the Neighbor of the Year award,” said Tom Patrick, head of García’s HOA. “He’s been a model citizen for our neighborhood and we want to recognize that achievement.”

But detractors had far different things to say. One neighbor who kept to himself and had an American flag hung proudly from a flagpole told us that, “this is ridiculous. This guy is an MS-13 gang member and they’re treating him like he’s a boyscout troop leader. I think these people have lived in Baltimore too long.”

It seems there will always be someone willing to judge a model citizen for their hand tattoos and court cases.

Brosé Sanchez

America First voice from Florida. Shares bold takes on culture, hypocrisy & history. Pronouns are: I, you, he/she, we, you, they. You should've learned that in grade school.

• Read more by Brosé Sanchez
• @joe_clay
• Florida