Kilmar Abrego Garcia criminal charges: DOJ alleges he ran 'alien smuggling' scheme
The Brief
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Salvadoran national who was detained and deported from his home in Maryland, has been returned to the U.S.
Abrego Garcia has been in the spotlight as the Trump administration continues its sweeping ICR raids and deportations.
Abrego Garcia had protective status in the U.S. and multiple courts, including the Supreme Court, ruled that his deportation was illegal.
WASHINGTON - Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who had been living in the U.S. for over a decade before being deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration due to an "administrative error," has been brought back to the U.S. to face federal charges.
Abrego Garcia touched down back in the U.S. Friday afternoon. He has been held in a Salvadoran prison since his arrest in March.
What we know
U.S. Attorney General Bondi said on Friday that a grand jury returned a sealed indictment on May 21 charging Abrego Garcia with alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling.
"Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice," Bondi said in a Friday afternoon press conference.
The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee when, according to the DOJ, Abrego-Garcia was transporting illegal migrants. It's now alleged that he participated in more than 100 such trips.
During the press conference, Bondi claimed that some of the migrants Abrego Garcia transported were members of the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13.
"Over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has participated in an alien smuggling ring," Bondi said. "This is what American justice looks like."
Bondi also claimed that over the years, Abrego Garcia has trafficked firearms and narcotics, although no charges have been brought in connection to those allegations.
Word for word
Abrego Garcia has been charged with alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling. Here's a closer look at the statue as defined by the U.S. Department of Justice:
Alien Smuggling: 1907. Title 8, U.S.C. 1324(a) Offenses
Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324(a) defines several distinct offenses related to aliens. Subsection 1324(a)(1)(i)-(v) prohibits alien smuggling, domestic transportation of unauthorized aliens, concealing or harboring unauthorized aliens, encouraging or inducing unauthorized aliens to enter the United States, and engaging in a conspiracy or aiding and abetting any of the preceding acts. Subsection 1324(a)(2) prohibits bringing or attempting to bring unauthorized aliens to the United States in any manner whatsoever, even at a designated port of entry.
Conspiracy/Aiding or Abetting -- Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(v) expressly makes it an offense to engage in a conspiracy to commit or aid or abet the commission of the foregoing offenses.
The backstory
At the time of his detainment, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Abrego Garcia had been taken into custody under suspicion of being an MS-13 gang member.
Abrego Garcia was accused of being part of the gang by a source, but after the Supreme Court determined that the Trump administration failed to provide legitimate evidence of his affiliation, they issued a ruling that he was deported illegally and had to be brought back to the U.S.
He had been living in the U.S. legally after an immigration judge ruled in 2019 that he had protective status due to concern that he could be killed if he was returned to his home country of El Salvador.
The Department of Justice later admitted that his deportation was due to an "administrative error," but for months, the Trump administration maintained that it could not facilitate his return to the U.S.
The president's spurious assertion was further backed when El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, visited the White House and said that he also didn't "have the power to return him [Abrego Garcia] to the United States."
Bondi says his release from El Salvador is the result of "recently found facts," which were not noted in the initial deportation order.
When asked what has now led to these criminal charges and Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S., Bondi said, "What has changed is that Donald Trump is now President of the United States and our borders are now secure."
Dig deeper
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a 29-year-old Salvadoran national who fled his home country and came to the U.S. when he was 16. He has since lived in Maryland, where he has three children and a wife, Jennifer Vasquez.
Abrego Garcia's lawyer say on March 12, he was arrested in Baltimore after working a shift as a sheet metal apprentice and picking up his five-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother's house.
He was then sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. He was deported just three days later, with no opportunity to plead his case. Abrego Garcia's lawyers, and several other U.S. representative and courts, say this was a violation of his right to due process.
Abrego Garcia has no criminal record in the U.S. outside of a few traffic violations. He had regularly checked in with immigration authorities.
The Source
This report uses information from the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attoney General Pam Bondi and FOX 5's previous reporting on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
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The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Trump signals case against Abrego Garcia will be ‘very easy'
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A protest in April at the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., during a hearing on the wrongful imprisonment of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the man at the center of a political and legal maelstrom after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, was flown back to the United States on Friday to face charges of transporting undocumented migrants. The stunning move by the Trump administration, after months of fighting any effort to return him, could end the most high-profile court battle over President Trump's authority to rapidly seize and deport immigrants. The decision to pull Mr. Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador and instead put him on trial in an American courtroom could provide an offramp for the Trump administration, which had bitterly opposed court orders requiring the government to take steps to return him after his wrongful removal in March. The 10-page indictment — filed in Federal District Court in Nashville in May and unsealed Friday — might also be an effort to save face: Bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back to face criminal charges may allow the White House to avoid a broader legal confrontation that was increasingly headed toward questions of whether Trump administration officials should be held in contempt of court. 'Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice,' Attorney General Pam Bondi said at a news conference in Washington. 'He was a smuggler of humans and children and women.' She added, 'This is what American justice looks like.' Two people familiar with the investigation said it made a significant leap forward when an imprisoned man recently came forward offering information about Mr. Abrego Garcia, but there was concern and disagreement among prosecutors about how to proceed. In recent weeks, a supervisor in the federal prosecutor's office in Nashville resigned over how the case was handled, these people said. Ms. Bondi went on to level accusations against Mr. Abrego Garcia that were not included in the indictment, claiming that co-conspirators told investigators he had helped smuggle 'minor children' and gang members during dozens of trips around the country. She linked him to more serious crimes, including murders and the abuse of women — even though he has only been charged in connection with smuggling. She also claimed, without providing evidence, that his seemingly law-abiding life in Maryland as a contractor, father and husband was a cover for a criminal activities spanning nine years. Ms. Bondi, who spearheaded the administration's public relations campaign to discredit him during the court battle, predicted he would be convicted and returned to El Salvador for imprisonment. The attorney general declined to say when the Tennessee investigation into Mr. Abrego Garcia was opened. His indictment was filed more than two weeks ago, on May 21, and unsealed Friday after he arrived in the United States. The deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said he believed the indictment was likely to render moot the lawsuit brought by Mr. Abrego Garcia's family to force his release from Salvadoran custody. Mr. Abrego Garcia made an initial appearance in federal court in Nashville later Friday, and the government moved to hold him in custody. He was detained in Putnam County jail outside the city and is expected to return to court on June 13. Asked whether he had spoken directly with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to take steps to free Mr. Abrego Garcia, Mr. Trump demurred. 'I don't want to say that. But he's returned,' he said, adding: 'And he should have never had to be returned. You take a look at what's happened with him; you take a look at what they found in the grand jury and everywhere else.' Mr. Bukele, who had previously said he would not release Mr. Abrego Garcia, said on social media on Friday, 'We work with the Trump administration, and if they request the return of a gang member to face charges, of course we wouldn't refuse.' Mr. Abrego Garcia's lawyers said they welcomed their day in court and pointed out that the government's decision to return him to the United States undercut its longstanding efforts to keep him in El Salvador. 'Today's action proves what we've known all along — that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,' said Andrew Rossman, a lawyer for Mr. Abrego Garcia. 'It's now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees to all persons.' Ama Frimpong, the legal director for CASA, an immigrant rights group based in Maryland, described the mixed feelings of Mr. Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura. She 'is of course very happy that her husband is back on U.S. soil, at least as far as we know,' Ms. Frimpong said, 'but of course, under very egregious and horrendous circumstances.' Even though the Trump administration has repeatedly accused Mr. Abrego Garcia of belonging to MS-13 — which has been designated as a terrorist organization — a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in April that the defendant had been deprived of his rights by being wrongly deported. 'The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13,' the panel wrote. 'Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process.' Since the start of the case, administration officials have sought to depict Mr. Abrego Garcia, a metal worker who has lived illegally in the United States without criminal charges for years, as a member of MS-13. The charges filed against him on Friday accused him of belonging to the gang and taking part in a conspiracy to 'transport thousands of undocumented aliens' across the United States. In court papers seeking his pretrial detention, prosecutors said Mr. Abrego Garcia had been part of a trafficking conspiracy and had played 'a significant role' in smuggling immigrants, including unaccompanied minors. If convicted, Mr. Abrego Garcia could face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each person he transported, the papers said, a penalty that would go 'well beyond the remainder of the defendant's life.' Mr. Abrego Garcia had been in Salvadoran custody since March 15, when he was flown, along with scores of other migrants, into the hands of jailers at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious prison known as CECOT. He was later moved to another facility in El Salvador. For nearly three months, his lawyers have been trying every legal strategy to enforce court orders demanding that the Trump administration 'facilitate' his release from El Salvador. From the beginning of the case, officials have acknowledged that Mr. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in violation of a previous court order that expressly barred him being sent to the country. But the Justice Department, acting on behalf of the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, has not given an inch beyond that admission, saying only that if Mr. Abrego Garcia presented himself at the U.S. border, officials would 'facilitate' his re-entry to the country. Department lawyers have also spent weeks stonewalling an effort by Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing the case, to get answers to the question of what the White House has done, and planned to do, to seek Mr. Abrego Garcia's freedom. The administration's serial refusals to respond to inquiries about its own behavior in the case has so annoyed Judge Xinis that this week she allowed Mr. Abrego Garcia's lawyers to seek penalties against the government. According to the indictment, the case against Mr. Abrego Garcia dated to Nov. 30, 2022, when he was stopped for speeding by the Tennessee Highway Patrol on Interstate 40 East, in Putnam County. Officers determined that the Chevrolet Suburban he was driving had been altered with 'an aftermarket third row of seats designed to carry additional passengers,' the indictment said. It also noted that there were 'nine Hispanic males packed into the S.U.V.' Mr. Abrego Garcia told the officers that he and his passengers had been in St. Louis for the past two weeks doing construction work, according to the indictment. But a subsequent investigation, prosecutors said, revealed that Mr. Abrego Garcia's cellphone and license plate reader data showed that he had been in Texas that morning and nowhere near St. Louis for the past weeks. Moreover, the indictment said, none of the people in the vehicle 'had luggage or even tools consistent with construction work.' Prosecutors said that the traffic stop in Tennessee was not the first time that Mr. Abrego Garcia had engaged in alleged immigrant smuggling, which they said was his 'primary source of income.' They added that he had transported about '50 undocumented aliens' a month across the country for several years. Jazmine Ulloa and Annie Correal contributed reporting.
