How A Child Of Immigrants Defends Abrego Garcia

Jeffrey Then was heading to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia at a Pennsylvania immigration detention center in December when the trip became something neither lawyer nor client had expected: a chance to bring Abrego Garcia home.

Then of Hecker Fink LLP and associate Alexandra "Aly" Kersley were still a couple of hours away when they learned that a federal judge had ordered their client's release. They spent the rest of the drive coordinating with colleagues and figuring out what would happen next. When they arrived, Then was able to tell Abrego Garcia the news himself, in his client's language.

"Being able to deliver that news directly in Spanish was really special," Then said.

During jail visits, the lawyers did not always have access to an interpreter. Then could explain developments and hear Abrego Garcia's questions directly.

Then, a New York-based counsel whose practice includes white collar and criminal defense work, joined Abrego Garcia's defense team in July 2025. He became one of the lawyers most regularly in touch with Abrego Garcia, visiting him at each of the three facilities where he was held after his return to the U.S. during criminal and immigration proceedings.

The representation placed Then inside one of the country's most closely watched legal battles. Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who had lived in Maryland for years, was deported to El Salvador in March 2025 despite a court order years earlier barring his removal to that country. After the U.S. Supreme Court directed the Trump administration to facilitate his return, federal prosecutors charged him with human smuggling based in part on a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop. His criminal defense lawyers argued that the prosecution was retaliation for Abrego Garcia's successful challenge to the deportation.

Then worked on the criminal defense alongside Hecker Fink partners Sean Hecker, Jenna M. Dabbs and David Patton, helping to write briefs, prepare witness questioning and keep Abrego Garcia informed. Immigration attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg and a separate team at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP handled his immigration and civil litigation.

By the end of that mid-December night, Abrego Garcia was back with his family in Maryland. Then and Kersley, who also speaks Spanish, accompanied him home.

"It was so wonderful that they could bring me here to my family, reunite me with my family," Abrego Garcia told Law360 in a recent interview conducted in Spanish, with Then also present. "And I think it was a very special moment for many people, for my family, and I think for Jeffrey, too."

Then's ability to speak directly with Abrego Garcia was not merely convenient. Abrego Garcia said it helped him develop confidence in a lawyer who could explain unfamiliar proceedings and legal terms without an interpreter standing between them.

"I came to trust him a great deal because we speak the same language," Abrego Garcia said.

That experience was familiar to Then. The son of Dominican immigrants, he grew up in the Bronx helping customers at his father's travel and money-transfer business understand English-language letters. He also saw his mother's relief when she could communicate in Spanish rather than struggle to make herself understood in English.

"I just thought, like, this is something that we should do," Then said of helping customers. "Wherever you are, whatever you do, you should make sure that you are also helping people."

Lessons From the Bronx

Then grew up on Morris Avenue, near the Kingsbridge Armory, the youngest of three brothers. His parents came from San Francisco de Macorís, in the Dominican Republic's northeastern region, and arrived in the United States in the 1980s. Then was born in the United States.

His childhood revolved around baseball and his father's business. On afternoons without baseball, he went to the shop after school and stayed until his father closed it at 8 p.m. His mother and brothers worked there, along with other relatives. His grandmother lived across the street.

Customers came to the shop after payday to send money to children, spouses and parents back home, Then recalled. If someone had been sick and missed work, there might be less money to send that week. He sometimes met the relatives whose arrival in the United States those customers had worked toward.

Customers also brought letters from landlords or the Social Security Administration. Then, along with his brothers, translated and explained what the documents said, long before he had any legal training.

At home, Then spoke Spanish with his parents. At school, he studied in bilingual classes and received instruction in English as a second language. He sometimes translated his own teachers' assessments for his parents.

Then played outfield and shared his love of baseball with his father. When business slowed, they watched games at the shop, pausing to help customers.

His father also made it to his games when work allowed. "Those are moments that I always remember and cherish very well," he said.

Then also watched his father adapt. As customers increasingly bought airline tickets online, the shop added a record store. Later came mobile phones and an internet café. That willingness to try something new stayed with him. When a legal approach fails, Then said, his father's example reminds him to consider another.

His parents' determination also shaped his understanding of belonging in the United States.

Both became citizens. Then remembers helping his mother study for her citizenship exam and watching her persevere through the lengthy process.

"They did the hard work, and I am proud of them, and grateful for the opportunity they created for me," Then wrote in a follow-up email.

Then said becoming American did not require his parents to give up their Dominican identity.

"You can be complicated in that way and also beautiful in that way," Then said.

Asked what he would want people skeptical of immigration to understand, he pointed to the contribution his family made through their business.

"I see real value in that. I see real benefit in that," he said.

His mother had her own vision for his future: He would become a lawyer and buy her a house.

At his high school graduation from Friends Seminary, a private K-12 Quaker school in Manhattan, Then recalled telling the gathering that he probably would not become a lawyer, but would try to buy the house.

Law seemed distant because he did not know how to get there. An aunt practiced in the Dominican Republic, but the path to an American legal career was unfamiliar.

Oliver Scholars, a nonprofit that helps students prepare for and navigate independent schools and college, helped Then gain admission to Friends Seminary for high school. His parents supported him even when the forms and decisions were new to them, too.

One school meeting remains especially vivid.

After moving from a Bronx public school to Friends, Then received a grade he remembers as roughly 66 on his first history exam. He feared he might not be able to stay. His mother attended a meeting with school staff, joined by an Oliver Scholars adviser who was Dominican and helped interpret.

Then remembers how frightening the situation felt and the difference it made to have someone interpret so his mother could participate in the discussion about his schooling.

He sees that responsibility in lawyering: helping people understand difficult questions while easing the additional burden of navigating them in an unfamiliar language.

After completing his undergraduate studies at University of Pennsylvania in 2011, Then joined the New York office of Mercer, the human resources consulting business of Marsh & McLennan Cos. He advanced from analyst to senior analyst and then associate in its health and benefits practice, advising employers on employee health plans, including changes related to the Affordable Care Act.

The work brought legal questions into his daily life. Success and promotions gave him confidence that law school was within reach, he said.

At Columbia Law School, he gravitated toward criminal law. Growing up in the Bronx during the stop-and-frisk era had made policing and its effects on his friends and community personal.

He considered becoming a prosecutor as a way to improve the system, but Columbia's Challenging the Consequences of Mass Incarceration Clinic put him alongside folks who were familiar.

"I was working with people who reminded me a lot of the people I grew up with, of the people that were in my neighborhood," he said.

Visiting clients, sitting in their homes and counseling them helped settle his direction. Defense work felt right.

He graduated in 2017, worked at Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP and clerked for U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in the Southern District of New York before joining Hecker Fink.

His practice encompasses white collar defense, investigations and civil litigation, alongside pro bono criminal, asylum and civil rights work.

A Case With Several Fronts

Hecker Fink began representing Abrego Garcia in the criminal case in June 2025. Dabbs, the Hecker Fink partner, said immigration counsel contacted the firm after Abrego Garcia's return from El Salvador, when federal defenders were representing him. Then joined about a month later.

At that point, the legal conflict had several distinct fronts. An immigration judge had found in 2019 that Abrego Garcia likely faced persecution after years of gang threats and attempted extortion in El Salvador and granted him protection from removal to that country, allowing him to live and work in the United States under federal supervision.

Immigration authorities nevertheless arrested him in Maryland in March 2025 and sent him to El Salvador, initially to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, a maximum-security prison where human rights groups have alleged prisoners are abused and are not provided meaningful access to lawyers. The government acknowledged that removing him to El Salvador violated the immigration judge's 2019 order and called it an "administrative error."

Abrego Garcia's wife sued on his behalf in Maryland. A federal judge ordered the administration to facilitate his return, and the U.S. Supreme Court largely upheld that directive in April 2025.

Resistance to bringing him back played out in public. Four days after the Supreme Court's order, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele sat beside President Donald Trump at an Oval Office meeting and took questions from reporters.

Asked by CNN's Kaitlan Collins whether he planned to return Abrego Garcia, Bukele said, "I don't have the power to return him to the United States."

Trump administration officials at the meeting maintained that the United States was not required to secure his release, even after the Supreme Court directed the government to facilitate his return.

While that litigation continued, federal investigators revisited a November 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee that had not previously produced criminal charges.

On May 21, 2025, a Tennessee grand jury returned a sealed indictment accusing Abrego Garcia of participating in a yearslong human smuggling conspiracy and unlawfully transporting immigrants during the 2022 trip. The administration returned him to the United States on June 6 to face those charges. He pled not guilty and was held in federal criminal custody in Tennessee and, after his release from that custody, detained by immigration authorities.

That sequence created two legally distinct fights. Immigration lawyers continued litigating his detention and removal, while criminal defense lawyers, including Then, confronted an indictment that had emerged only after Abrego Garcia successfully challenged his deportation.

Then, who resisted taking individual credit, said lawyers at every level of the firm drafted motions and briefs, researched, reviewed discovery, prepared for hearings and met with Abrego Garcia.

Then singled out Hecker Fink colleagues Derek Wikstrom, Thea Raymond-Sidel and Nicole Ng, alongside Kersley. Raymond-Sidel, Ng and Kersley, the associates on the team, typically prepared initial drafts of briefs with guidance from Wikstrom and Then, he said.

"This is one of those cases where it was often all-hands-on-deck and everyone was involved throughout," Then said.

One of Then's principal responsibilities was communicating with Abrego Garcia. Then and his colleagues visited him at the three U.S. detention facilities. Speaking Spanish allowed Then to explain developments directly and to hear Abrego Garcia's questions in his own words.

"Now he explains things to me, I understand him, and I think that is very good," Abrego Garcia told Law360. "I think I have understood many things in this legal process."

Then was an obvious choice for that role because of his experience and ability to connect with clients, Dabbs said. "He's a super-talented lawyer and a pleasure to work with, so he's one of those people, I think, all of us want to work with on as many things as we can."

As the representation developed, the team entrusted Then with substantial communication with Abrego Garcia, his relatives and organizations assisting the family. Then's Spanish made it easier to arrange conversations quickly, Dabbs said.

The criminal case itself arose from the November 2022 traffic stop on Interstate 40 in Putnam County, Tennessee. A state trooper stopped the Chevrolet Suburban that Abrego Garcia was driving with eight passengers inside. Abrego Garcia said they were returning to Maryland after construction work in St. Louis and described the SUV as belonging to his boss. His wife said he sometimes transported fellow construction workers between job sites.

Troopers let him continue without a traffic ticket but referred the encounter to federal investigators. Prosecutors in 2025 alleged that the trip was part of a human smuggling operation, relying on a cooperating witness, phone and vehicle-location records, and what they described as inconsistencies in Abrego Garcia's account.

The defense challenged not only the charges but also the government's timing. Homeland Security Investigations had opened an inquiry Dec. 22, 2022, then closed it April 1, 2025, after Abrego Garcia had been sent to El Salvador. Agents reopened it April 17, one week after the Supreme Court directed the government to facilitate his return.

His lawyers argued that the administration revived the investigation and assembled a criminal case to punish Abrego Garcia for successfully asserting his legal rights. In August 2025, they moved to dismiss the indictment for vindictive and selective prosecution.

The court found enough evidence of a realistic likelihood of vindictiveness to permit discovery and an evidentiary hearing. That decision gave the defense unusual access to communications among investigators, the U.S. attorney's office in Nashville and senior U.S. Department of Justice officials.

Then said two categories of evidence became especially important: public remarks by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and documents showing the involvement of Blanche's subordinate, Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh.

During a June 6, 2025, appearance on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle," Blanche connected the investigation to the court fight over Abrego Garcia's return.

"So what should we do as a Department of Justice when a judge is accusing us of doing something wrong?" Blanche said, according to the government's appellate brief. "We have an obligation to everyone, including you, to investigate it. And that's exactly what we did."

Discovery produced emails in which Singh described the matter as a "top priority," asked about possible charges and requested draft charging documents. He also instructed prosecutors to "keep close hold until we get clearance" shortly before the indictment was presented.

"That combination — the statement and the documents — was really important evidence," Then said.

For the defense, the combination helped connect the decision to investigate Abrego Garcia after his successful lawsuit to the decision to charge him.

U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. later drew that distinction: Blanche's comments addressed the investigation, while Singh's involvement linked senior DOJ officials to the indictment. It was that alleged connection — not simply the existence of evidence of a crime — that the lawyers asked the court to examine.

The defense still had to turn the documents into a courtroom presentation. At a hearing in February, Robert McGuire, the former acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, testified that he alone had decided to prosecute Abrego Garcia and had received no instruction from the White House, DOJ leadership or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to seek an indictment.

Hecker Fink partner David Patton cross-examined him. Then had helped draft the first outline, working with colleagues to organize the record and then directly with Patton to refine the questioning.

"It was one of the most important pieces of the case," Then said. "An attorney might sign up for a full-day [of continuing legal education] on cross-examinations to learn the ins and outs. We got it firsthand from David."

Then described Patton, a former federal defender, as one of the best courtroom lawyers he knew. He said the preparation was also a lesson in how senior lawyers can use consequential work to teach the rest of a team.

Patton, in turn, credited Then's work behind the scenes.

"The preparation behind it is enormous, and it was truly a team effort, and Jeffrey was intimately involved in preparing it," Patton said.

"He was very much driving the train on a lot of our briefing," Patton added.

The Person Behind the Briefs

On May 22, Judge Crenshaw dismissed the indictment. He found insufficient evidence of actual vindictiveness, but concluded that the circumstances created a presumption of vindictiveness that the government failed to rebut.

"The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego's successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the government would not have brought this prosecution," Judge Crenshaw wrote.

The ruling did not decide whether Abrego Garcia committed the alleged offenses.

Then said the representation also taught him something about the legal system: how much attorneys could accomplish together. He pointed to the work of Abrego Garcia's immigration attorney, Sandoval-Moshenberg, and the Quinn Emanuel attorneys handling his civil case.

"One of the things that I've seen in this case is the way that we have all, working in our own lanes but toward one ultimate goal, been able to really help Kilmar, help his family and try our best to bring justice together," Then said.

"It's been incredible to see all of us working together in that sense," he added.

Patton said Then helps junior lawyers develop by giving them meaningful assignments and readily shares credit for the team's work.

"He is just a true, good colleague," Patton said.

Kersley recalled being told soon after joining the firm that Then was a mentor to everyone. She initially wondered how anyone could find enough time.

"And somehow he makes the hours," she said.

That approach mattered in Abrego Garcia's representation, where complex legal questions carried immediate consequences for the client and his family.

"I think they just genuinely formed a friendship," Patton said of Then and Abrego Garcia.

That trust allowed the lawyers to discuss difficult issues in a way that helped their client make informed decisions, Patton said. The responsibility to decide remained with Abrego Garcia.

Asked what people could not learn about Then from the court filings, Abrego Garcia described the personal connection that made him comfortable placing his trust in the lawyer.

"Jeffrey is a good person," he said.

The relationship also shaped how the team shared its most significant news.

After the dismissal ruling arrived, the lawyers convened a video call with Abrego Garcia, his wife and his mother. Some team members were still joining, Dabbs recalled, while the family spoke among themselves in Spanish.

Then told his colleagues he would deliver the news rather than wait for everyone, Dabbs said.

Then confirmed that sequence.

"I wanted to wait for everyone, but they were anxious to hear the news, and we were overjoyed to share it," he said.

"Best moment of my professional life," Dabbs said.

The dismissal did not end the work for Then and his colleagues. The DOJ appealed, arguing that the prosecution rested on legitimate evidence and public safety concerns. In an Oct. 16 response, Abrego Garcia's lawyers urged the Sixth Circuit to uphold the dismissal, arguing that senior DOJ officials had driven the prosecution and that the record contradicted McGuire's claims of independence.

Abrego Garcia also continued fighting the administration's effort to deport him to Liberia in separate immigration proceedings. An Oct. 6 hearing in Maryland was abruptly canceled, and neither side explained the cancellation to Law360 that day.

The administration also appealed to the Fourth Circuit⁠, challenging an order that barred immigration authorities from detaining him again.

Then said he understood the dismissal's broader significance, but kept returning to what relief meant for his client and his ability to spend time with his family.

His own family's experience informs how Then thinks about that work and his place in the country. He spoke of the obstacles immigrants and their children face, but also of the strengths developed in overcoming them. Those obstacles are real and should be addressed, he said.

Asked whether he considered himself patriotic, Then answered yes, adding he is also a Captain America fan.

"You have these ideals of peace and justice, and you try to live them out," he said. "And you also try to hold your community, your country accountable."

In a follow-up email, Then described accountability as "a sincere form of love."

"I love the U.S. I love New York. I love the Bronx, where I grew up, and Brooklyn, where I live now. I love my communities, broadly defined," he wrote. "And when you love something, you want to protect it; and when you see it going down a different path, you fight for it, with love and peace, of course."

He added: "I did go to a Quaker school."

--Editing by Orlando Lorenzo and Tim Ruel.