| Honorific Prefix: | Brigadier General |
| José Guillermo García | |
| Term Start: | 15 October 1979 |
| Term End: | April 1983 |
| President: | Revolutionary Government Junta (until 1982) Álvaro Magaña (from 1982) |
| Birth Date: | 25 June 1933 |
| Known For: | Human rights violations |
José Guillermo García (born 25 June 1933) is a former general of the military of El Salvador and was minister of defense of the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador between the years 1979 and 1983.
He emigrated to the United States in 1989, where he lived until January 2016 until he was deported to El Salvador.
He was sued, along with Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, in the United States district court in West Palm Beach[1] in two precedent-setting legal actions:
Guillermo García and General Vides Casanova had been undergoing a deportation process since 1999.[4] The Department of Homeland Security later charged García in 2009 with participating or assisting in torture and extrajudicial killings during his tenure as Minister of Defense. 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 García'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.[5]
On 12 April 2014, an immigration court judge ruled against García and called for his deportation.[6] On 16 December 2015, it was announced that an immigration appeals court upheld the decision to deport Garcia.[7] Garcia's attorney afterwards said they both plan to appeal the decision to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia.[8]
On 8 January 2016, American immigration officials deported General García back to El Salvador.[9] [10]