José Guillermo García

He was sued, along with Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, in the United States district court in West Palm Beach[2] in two precedent-setting legal actions:

• Ford v. Garcia, a lawsuit by the families of four Catholic churchwomen, including two Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic, who were murdered by a Salvadoran military death squad on 2 December 1980. Garcia's defense won the case, and the families appealed. Their appeal was denied, and in 2003, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear further proceedings.
• Ramagoza v. Garcia, a lawsuit filed by the Center for Justice and Accountability on behalf of survivors of torture during the Salvadoran Civil War. Garcia lost, and a judgment of over $54 million (U.S.) was entered against him and his co-defendant, and upheld on appeal.[3][4]

Guillermo Garcia and General Vides Casanova had been undergoing a deportation process since 1999.[5] The Department of Homeland Security later charged Garcia in 2009 with participating or assisting in torture and extrajudicial killings during his tenure as Minister of Defense.[5] His attorney Alina Cruz argued that he could not be deported on those grounds because he was already exonerated of those charges in the landmark case Ford vs. Garcia when a jury found that he was not in control of his troops. It was determined in 1998 that Garcia's co-defendant General Vides Casanova and Casanova's cousin Col. Oscar Edgardo Casanova Vejar, the local military commander in Zacatecoluca, had planned and orchestrated the executions of the four North American churchwomen.[6]

On 12 April 2014, an immigration court judge ruled against Garcia and called for his deportation.[7] On 16 December 2015, it was announced that an immigration appeals court upheld the decision to deport Garcia.[8] Garcia's attorney afterwards said they both plan to appeal the decision to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia.[1]

On 8 January 2016, American immigration officials deported General Garcia back to El Salvador.[9][10]