A year later, Abrego Garcia’s wife says ‘thanks,’ urges rallygoers to keep fighting

A year ago, Jennifer Vasquez Sura did not know where her husband had been taken or if he was even alive, only that he had been detained by federal immigration agents.

Today, she said, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is safe and back with his family in part because of the work and support of labor and immigrant groups like those that turned out for a  May Day rally in Washington, D.C.

“I stood on this same day, May Day last year, fighting for my husband and not even knowing if he was alive,” Vasquez Sura said. “But holding on to my faith and the strength of the movement coming together to stand up for my family, I stand here today able to finally say that he is home.

“The movement we are building together have shown up time after time,” she said. “I want to say thank you for marching for us and for all the workers and all the Kilmars that are still out there waiting to be reunited with their family.”

Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, was in deportation proceedings once before, but an immigration judge in 2019 blocked the order to send him home, where he feared gang violence. That order was still in place in March 2025, when he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who claimed, wrongly, that there had been a change in his status.

He was swiftly deported to CECOT, a brutal prison in El Salvador, while attorneys in the U.S. worked for his return. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which said he was wrongly deported and should be returned, but it would take until June to do so — when he was detained again on a new charge of human smuggling from 2022 in Tennessee.

His case became a high-profile example of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration tactics, as different judges ordered him released and ICE would detain him on new charges for the better part of a year before he finally landed back home with his family in Prince George’s County over the holidays.

The immigrant rights group We Are CASA, which took on Abrego Garcia’s case last year, joined other national and local organizations that stretched almost a city block as they marched Friday for May Day.

The day celebrates the labor movement, which was evident in the focus of Friday’s rally against President Donald Trump and administration policies that they say cater to billionaires and ignores or opposes workers, especially union workers. But mixed in with the workers’ rights and “Down with Trump” signs Friday were “No ICE” and “Stop the deportations” signed held by some of the thousands who were marching in the crowd.

One of those marching was Mildred Danis-Taylor, the wife of Rodney Taylor, a double-amputee barber detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Jan. 15, 2025. Taylor has been in ICE custody ever since.

Danis-Traylor traveled with others on a 12-hour bus ride from Georgia to D.C. to attend her first May Day protest.

Taylor came to the U.S. from Liberia at age 2. When ICE detained him last year, he had a valid work permit and a green card was in process. But he had a criminal charge from his teen years. The Georgia Parole Board in 2010 pardoned Taylor for that charge, but it was still enough to get him picked up by ICE agents.

Taylor’s case was the focus of a February letter signed by 21 members of Congress to ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. It said Taylor was rejected for medical care “multiple times” and “went 6 days without a shower because the facility did not have appropriate medical equipment, such as a shower stool.”

“I am still waiting on justice and holding on to my faith. This is not just neglect, this is abuse,” Danis-Taylor said on stage Friday. “May Day is a demand for dignity, protection and freedom because no worker is free until we all are free.”

After Danis-Taylor spoke on stage, she said in an interview that she has bonded with Vasquez Sura.

“I thank Jennifer. It’s hard to find somebody that can relate to this situation,” she said.

Danis-Taylor called for the elimination of 287(g) agreements between local law enforcement and federal agencies. Five Georgia jurisdiction had such agreements in 2024, but today there are more than 40, she said.

When told that Maryland had just banned those agreements this year, Danis-Taylor said she is jealous.

“It’s just growing and growing in Georgia,” she said. “What does that look like for union workers? What does that look like for immigrants? Giving the allowance to profile Black and brown people.”

CASA Executive Director George Escobar said Friday that the next steps are to have the federal government divest from spending billions on military equipment and invest instead in health care, affordable housing and a living wage.

“We need them to invest in us,” he said. “May Day is about lifting up the plight of the worker, lifting up the experience of our workers throughout our country.”