The wife of a Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador by mistake said she and her family were forced to move to a safe house after the Department of Homeland Security exposed her address on its official X account.
“I don’t feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura told The Washington Post.
Vasquez Sura’s husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was one of hundreds of immigrants the Trump administration sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March. However, the administration admitted in court that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was a mistake due to an administrative error.
President Donald Trump and his officials have since refused to take steps to bring him back to the United States and defied a court order to do so, instead characterizing him as an MS-13 gang member. Abrego Garcia has denied membership in the international gang, and has not been convicted of any crime.
In an attempt to further portray Abrego Garcia as dangerous, DHS posted a copy of a protective order filed by Vasquez Sura against her husband in 2021. The document included her family’s home address.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a history of violence and was not the upstanding ‘Maryland Man’ the media has portrayed him as,” the department’s post read. “According to court filings, Garcia’s wife sought a domestic violence restraining order against him, claiming he punched, scratched, and ripped off her shirt, among other harm.”
Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, addressed the protective order in a statement to multiple news outlets, saying she got into a disagreement with her husband and acted out of caution after surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship.
“Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through the situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling,” the statement read.
However, Vasquez Sura told The Washington Post that ever since DHS posted her address to millions of their followers online, she began fearing for her family’s safety.
She noted that verbal attacks from Trump, his officials and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have all made her feel more afraid.
The DHS post is still up on X and has received some backlash. The department told HuffPost in an email that Vasquez Sura’s protective order is public information that anyone could get access to.