Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife covers MS-13 gang member’s hand tattoos with hearts in social media post

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Abrego Garcia, posted the video to her social media and has been doing so with a number of other videos to promote a GoFundMe that she has set up to aid her family after Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration.

The tattoos appear to be a marijuana leaf, a smile, a cross, as well as a skull. Some have said that the cross and skull are disguising the number "13" on the last two digits of his hand.

President Donald Trump posted about the knuckle tattoos as well.

Abrego Garcia was deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador and since then, Democrats as well as some media reports have painted him as a "Maryland father" that has been wrongly set out of the country. The Trump administration has been ordered to take "all available steps to facilitate" his return to the country, though the administration has said that it cannot force El Salvador to release one of its own citizens.

In 2012, Abrego Garcia acknowledged that he came into the United States illegally, and he was later detained in 2019 in Maryland. Officers at the time of the arrest identified Abrego Garcia as well as the two other men who were members of the MS-13 gang. Abrego Garcia was wearing clothing that displayed symbols associated with Hispanic gang culture.

In 2019, an immigration court found "the determination that the Respondent [Abrego Garcia] is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record, namely, information contained in the Gang Field Interview Sheet." However, he was later granted a deportation withholding order because he claimed that he feared for his life if he went back to El Salvador. He reportedly, however, told ICE before being deported that he did not fear returning to his home nation.

Although Abrego Garcia's attorneys say he has never been convicted of any crime in the US, his own wife filed a domestic violence protective order, alleging that he repeatedly beat her up in domestic violence disputes. Additionally, he was stopped by law enforcement in 2022 for suspected human and labor trafficking.