Court Audio: Abrego Garcia’s Wife Says He’d ‘Wake Up and Beat Me’

The wife of alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia once pleaded with a Maryland judge for protection from her husband, citing multiple examples of domestic abuse, according to an unearthed audio recording obtained by USA Today.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura has repeatedly defended her husband’s innocence after the Trump administration deported him to El Salvador over his alleged gang ties but acknowledged making a “clerical error” in his removal from the US.

In the newly-surfaced audio from 2020, Vasquez Sura could be heard outlining several instances of physical abuse by Abrego Garcia that resulted in her making “a lot of police reports” and suffering “bruises” from his alleged beatings.

She said she had already made one attempt to obtain a protective order against Abrego Garcia, but was stopped “because his family like washed my brain, telling me that his dad was sick and not to do it.”

Vasquez Sura also shared that, in one instance, Abrego Garcia “pushed” her as she tried to enter the basement of their home, forcing her to call 911 and cry for help from a neighbor.

She said police took “a long time to get to the house — it was probably like 20, 30 minutes.”

“So I saw a neighbor walking his dog and I opened the door and I was like ‘help.’ And then when he heard me, like, [Abrego Garcia] grabbed me from my hair, and then he slapped me. And then the neighbor, like, he didn’t know what to do,” she added.

Vasquez Sura said Abrego Garcia “hit me” earlier that week “around like three in the morning” and did so on several other occasions.

"He slapped me three times." Audio depicts Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, pleading with a judge for temporary protection from her husband in 2020. pic.twitter.com/GnnxRjjcaQ



— USA TODAY Video (@usatodayvideo) May 2, 2025

“He would just wake up and like hit me. And then last Saturday for my daughter’s birthday party, before I went to my daughter’s birthday party, he slapped me three times and then last week, I did call the police. My sister called the police because he hit me in front of my sister,” she said.

In response to the audio clip resurfacing, Vasquez Sura told USA Today that “neither” she nor Abrego Garcia “were in a good place at the time.”

“I previously acknowledged the protection order and will again address a personal and painful part of mine and Kilmar’s life,” said Vasquez Sura.

She went on to say Abrego Garcia “was traumatized from the time he spent in ICE detention, and we were in the throes of COVID.”

“Like many couples, we were caring for our children with barely enough to get by. All of those factors contributed to the actions which caused me to seek the protective order,” she added.

Vasquez Sura applied for a protective order from her husband in 2020 with the District Court of Maryland for Prince George’s County. The order said he once boasted he could kill his wife and “no one could do anything to him.”

The newly surfaced document preceded a 2021 protective order request she filed against her husband. In that document she alleged he had punched, scratched and grabbed her — with some of the alleged abuse so severe, she was left with bruises and bleeding.

Abrego Garcia was nabbed by ICE last month and deported to his native El Salvador along with 260 other suspected gangbangers — despite an immigration judge granting him protection from deportation.

Abrego Garcia has denied wrongdoing, and his lawyer has insisted that he is not associated with any gangs.

He was initially placed in the hell-hole Salvadoran megaprison CECOT before being moved to a lower-security facility earlier this month.

Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni — who has since been fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office — admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was due to an “administrative error.”

Still, the Trump administration asserts Abrego Garcia, who entered the US illegally, had no right to be in the US.

Abrego Garcia was accused of being a gang member in both a Maryland police report and in 2018 court papers.

A Maryland federal judge has ordered the administration to “take all available steps to facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the US, a ruling upheld by an appeals court and later the US Supreme Court in a unanimous decision.

But the Trump administration argues it “cannot guarantee success in sensitive international negotiations” over Abrego Garcia’s release from foreign custody.