The former Prince George’s County officer who interviewed Kilmar Abrego Garcia and helped label him as a gang member that eventually resulted with his mistaken deportation, later pleaded guilty to misconduct and was pushed out of the Police Department, records show.

The officer, Ivan Mendez, engaged in criminal misconduct for helping an undocumented sex worker with whom he had a sexual relationship from getting in trouble, according to court records. That episode ended with Mendez’s guilty plea in 2022 and put him on a “do not call” list for officers so mistrusted by prosecutors that he would not be called again as witnesses in court.

The revelations come as Abrego Garcia’s erroneous deportation last month continues to fuel court battles, protests, and trips by a slew of U.S. politicians, including Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, to El Salvador demanding his return. In March, Abrego Garcia was pulled over outside an Ikea store near Baltimore and later deported back to his native El Salvador and imprisoned.

On Tuesday, the federal judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, blasted the administration for failing to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return as ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court and engaging in a “willful and bad faith refusal” to provide more information about his arrest and the steps the government has taken to try to bring him back to Maryland.

The judge imposed a new deadline of Wednesday night for U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials to supply more information, as she had earlier ordered.

With renewed attention on the immigration case, several legal experts said they now worry the Prince George’s County Police officer’s misconduct may have tainted the department’s assessment of Abrego Garcia, which eventually led to his forced removal to a Salvadoran prison.

Born in Puebla, Mexico, Mendez, the officer involved in the case, came to the United States in 2000. He became a U.S. citizen at the age of 18, according to his attorney. He joined the Police Department in 2009.

On Sept. 13, 2022, Mendez pleaded guilty to one count of misconduct in office in exchange for one year of unsupervised probation, court records show. He then received probation before judgment, which is not considered a conviction. The department said he was terminated in December of that year.

Mendez, who was a corporal at the time, admitted to providing confidential information to a sex worker he was paying for sexual acts.

In 2016, Mendez started a “for pay sexual relationship with a commercial sex worker that continued for years,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Joel Patterson, chief of the Public Integrity Unit in the Prince George’s County State’s Attorney’s Office.

Following one of their encounters, the woman mentioned to Mendez she was going to start working at a brothel. That’s when Mendez started to divulge “confidential police information” and told her law enforcement was going to conduct an operation in the coming days to shut down the brothel, Patterson said.

In 2018, Mendez was named detective of the year for his investigation and arrest in Prince George’s County of more than 13 gang members, his attorney, Shaun Owens, said in court.

Mendez had developed a close relationship with the woman and got to know her family well, Owens said.

“He did not want to see her get in trouble, go to jail and potentially be removed from this country, as she was undocumented at the time,” Owens said.

Mendez told the judge that “I do say that it is my actions that had got me to this place. You know, I was, and I’m still going to miss this department. I would’ve laid down my life for every single person that I worked besides, to include any residents in this county.”

The department first became aware of the allegations against Mendez on April 1, 2019, days after he encountered Abrego Garcia in a Home Depot parking lot. He was suspended two days later.

At the time of Mendez’s indictment, interim Police Chief Hector Velez said, “Officers who break the law have no place in this agency.”

Last week, the department said in a statement that a review of records confirmed Mendez was involved in Abrego Garcia’s gang field interview worksheet on March 28, 2019, which eventually led to his designation as a gang member and rationale for his wrongful deportation.

“The PGPD has not had any further interactions with Abrego Garcia nor received any new intelligence related to him,” the statement read, adding that the department would not provide any additional details.

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers president Christopher Wellborn said: “It is vitally important that when judges are making rulings — when those rulings are made solely on the officer, the history of the officer should be disclosed. A judge and jury should take that into account when examining the officer’s credibility.”

Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue said police misconduct has far-reaching and profound consequences beyond the immediate incident.

“The integrity of the criminal legal system hinges on trust and accountability, reliance on officers who have established patterns of untrustworthiness and bias results in unlawful arrests, erroneous convictions, erosion of public confidence and wrongful deportations,” she said.

In Abrego Garcia’s case, police outlined their evidence for determining his gang affiliation in 2019 when he was first detained.

He was loitering in a Home Depot parking lot wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie that displayed rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouths of different presidents, Mendez, who filled out the Gang Field Interview Sheet, wrote, noting that was “indicative of Hispanic gang culture.” In addition, a confidential informant reported Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13’s Western clique. His family and attorneys have countered saying Abrego Garcia was at the store parking lot looking for work and that the Western clique operates out of New York — a state where he never lived.

The other officer involved in the episode wrote that two water bottles filled with cannabis were found on the scene, but didn’t attribute it to any of the four men involved.

At the end of the process, police designated Abrego Garcia as a verified member of MS-13. Records show law enforcement also confirmed he had no criminal history and did not charge him with any gang-related crime.

An immigration judge would later accept the gang field interview sheet as sufficient to confirm Abrego Garcia’s gang membership.

Labeling Abrego Garcia as a gang member has been damning for the Beltsville father of three.

Earlier this month when President Donald Trump met with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, administration officials reiterated their belief that Abrego Garcia has a gang affiliation that warranted his removal from the U.S.

On Friday, Trump said he knew Abrego Garcia was “unbelievably bad” and called him an “illegal alien” and “foreign terrorist.”

The Maryland Freedom Caucus this week released a letter standing behind Trump and his immigration policies and supporting law enforcement “in keeping Maryland safe.”

The group said because Abrego Garcia entered “our country illegally,” “he certainly should not be welcomed back.”

Wellborn said the damage has been done.

“Even if Mr. Garcia is able to come back, there has been horrible damage done. Going into any prison, can be a traumatic event.”

If Abrego Garcia were ever returned to the U.S. and were to have any further hearings, Wellborn said attorneys would be able to question the gang designation that Mendez assigned him.

Attempts to contact Mendez were unsuccessful. A phone number associated with his Anne Arundel County address was disconnected.

Abrego Garcia’s case has resurfaced decade-long efforts by politicians and advocates to end the use of gang databases, which critics have said unfairly target racial groups like Black and brown people.

For years, the gang database in Prince George’s County have been a problem, said Del. Ashanti Martinez, a Prince George’s County Democrat who also chairs the Maryland Legislative Latino Caucus.

Jeff Beeson, executive director of the Baltimore Washington High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, said in an email to The Baltimore Banner this week that the database has been “decommissioned.” As of Jan. 29, he said, all of the data has been purged.