Trump Admin Returns Abrego Garcia—To Face New Criminal Charges
The Trump administration is finally abiding by a court order and returning the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, ABC News reports, but in a face-saving maneuver it is criminally charging him for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants.
As part of the Trump administration's smear campaign to obscure its error in deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in violation of a immigration judge order, the Department of Homeland Security had trumpeted a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee which yielded no charges against him.
ABC News reported last month that the Trump DOJ had begun investigating the traffic stop, including interviewing a convicted felon in an Alabama prison who was the alleged owner of the vehicle Abrego Garcia was driving when he was stopped.
That investigation appears to have yielded a sealed federal two-count indictment (below) of Abrego Garcia last month in Tennessee accusing him of hauling undocumented immigrants. 'The alleged conspiracy spanned nearly a decade and involved the domestic transport of thousands of non-citizens, including some children, from Mexico and Central America,' ABC News reported, citing sources familiar with the investigation.
Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador on March 15, the same weekend as the Alien Enemies Act deportations but the Salvadoran was not removed under the act. He was incarcerated initially at CECOT before being transferred to a different detention facility.
The Trump administration has repeatedly accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, which he has denied and a federal judge has concluded was based on flimsy, unsubstantiated evidence. President Trump went so far as to hold up an obviously photoshopped image the falsely connected the tattoos on Abrego Garcia's hands to MS-13.
In a dark twist, ABC News' report includes this line about the new criminal charges against Abrego Garcia: 'Among those allegedly transported were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, sources familiar with the investigation said.'
'This is what American justice looks like,' Attorney General Pam Bondi said without irony in televised remarks from Main Justice with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at her side. Blanche said that El Salvador released Abrego Garcia after the U.S. government presented it with an arrest warrant for him.
Late Update: Bondi in her remarks and prosecutors in a motion for pretrial detention (below) highlighted the allegations in the indictment that in addition to transporting undocumented immigrants, Abrego Garcia abused women migrants and trafficked firearms and narcotics.
Bondi and the pretrial detention motion also introduced new uncharged allegations of 'solicitation of child pornography' to demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is a threat to the community. They also repeat an allegation that Abrego Garcia, as the motion put it, 'participated in the murder of a rival gang member's mother in El Salvador.'
In short, the Trump administration – in a case that drew international attention for how it screwed up – is throwing everything at Abrego Garcia. Of course, it can be true that both the Trump administration and Abrego Garcia engaged in lawless behavior. The fact of one doesn't excuse the other. The underlying issue in the deportation case was about the lack of due process, which Abrego Garcia was entitled to in immigration proceedings and is now entitled to in the criminal proceedings, and which wasn't available in indefinite, uncharged detention in El Salvador.
Later Update: The Trump DOJ has now notified U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland that Abrego Garcia has been returned. 'Defendants hereby provide notice that they have complied with the Court's order, and indeed have successfully facilitated Abrego Garcia's return,' it said in a new filing. The Justice Department said it would move to have the case dismissed and asked for all deadlines to be stayed, seeming to glide right past Judge Xinis' ongoing contempt of court inquiry into the government's conduct in the case.
The indictment:
The motion for pretrial detention:
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