Kilmar Abrego Garcia pleads not guilty to human trafficking charges

Yahoo

17 hours ago

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national illegally deported by the Trump administration in March, pleaded not guilty Friday to human trafficking charges that federal prosecutors leveled upon his return to the United States.
One of Abrego Garcia's defense attorneys, William Allensworth, entered the not guilty plea on his client's behalf at a federal court hearing expected to focus on whether Abrego Garcia should be detained pending trial on the two felony criminal charges he faces related to immigrant smuggling.
The not guilty plea came just after Abrego Garcia briefly spoke in court, saying in Spanish that he understood the charges against him.
Abrego Garcia, wearing a red jail jumpsuit, entered the courtroom minutes before the hearing began. He got a hug from one of his attorneys, who sat flanking him at the defense table. Two Spanish interpreters were also on hand.
The criminal case against Abrego Garcia, lodged secretly through a grand jury indictment last month, preceded Abrego Garcia's abrupt return to the United States last week. That was more than two months after the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his release from El Salvador's custody. Since then, the administration has resisted efforts by federal courts to provide updates about its efforts to bring him back, cloaking them in assertions of 'state secrets' privilege and assailing judicial demands for more information.
While prosecutors and the defense are expected to joust fiercely Friday about whether Abrego Garcia should be detained as he awaits trial, he's unlikely to be released immediately even if U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes rules in his favor. Prosecutors could appeal such a ruling and have indicated they would seek to detain him on immigration grounds regardless of his status in the criminal case.
The first witness at the detention hearing Friday was Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Peter Joseph, who detailed a traffic stop of Abrego Garcia on Interstate 40 in 2022 that is the centerpiece of the immigrant-smuggling charges he faces. Joseph was not at the scene that night but as interim U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire played video from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer's body-worn camera, the federal agent detailed why the episode appeared to involve human trafficking.
Abrego Garcia can be heard in the video saying that the people in the Chevrolet Suburban were working construction in St. Louis and were headed for Maryland, but Joseph said there were nine passengers in the vehicle but no construction tools. The state officers asked the men in the vehicle to put their names and birth dates on a piece of paper passed around the van.
McGuire asked Joseph how many of the passengers Abrego Garcia was driving were in the U.S. illegally.
'Right now, we're at six of the nine,' the agent said.
Abrego Garcia's deportation case emerged as the most prominent early example of the perceived excesses of Trump's mass-deportation policies and of his administration's resistance to complying with court orders it disagrees with.
Abrego Garcia entered the United States illegally in 2012 and sought asylum in 2019 after he was detained and faced deportation proceedings. Though his claim was denied, an immigration judge at the time barred ICE from sending him back to El Salvador because of the potential that he might be targeted for violence by a local gang.
Despite the court order, which remains in effect, he was abruptly arrested on March 15 and loaded aboard one of a controversial trio of flights that ferried more than 230 foreigners from the U.S. to El Salvador, where they were immediately frog-marched into a notoriously harsh anti-terrorism prison.
Many of those men were expelled from the U.S. under the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority Trump invoked against a Venezuela gang, Tren de Aragua. While the White House and prosecutors have claimed that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, which his lawyers have denied, Trump's proclamation covered only Venezuelan citizens and Abrego Garcia is Salvadoran.
Trump administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, initially described his deportation as an administrative error because it violated the immigration judge's order. However, the White House quickly retreated from acknowledging any mistake.
About 100 protesters rallied outside the courthouse as the hearing got underway, carrying signs with slogans such as 'Free Kilmar: Support Due Process and Human Rights' and 'Resist ICE.'