Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, has been returned to the United States to face federal criminal charges, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday.
For months, the Trump administration has been locked in an intense standoff with the federal judiciary over court orders for the government to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's return from El Salvador, where he was mistakenly deported in mid-March, in a situation that one federal judge warned could present an 'incipient crisis' between the two branches.
Abrego Garcia has been indicted on two criminal counts in the in the Middle District of Tennessee: conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.
The indictment unsealed Friday afternoon accuses Abrego Garcia and others of partaking in a conspiracy in recent years in which they 'knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 members and associates.'
Abrego Garcia and his family say he fled gang violence in El Salvador and have denied allegations he's an MS-13 member.
Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported in March to El Salvador due to an 'administrative error,' according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. He was sent to the country's notorious mega-prison where he was held for weeks before being moved to another facility.
The case became a political lightning rod for the Trump administration and its deportation program, while Trump's shifting rhetoric about whether he could return the Maryland father had raised questions about the administration's willingness to comply with the courts.
But the administration's initial acknowledgement in a court filing that it mistakenly deported him opened it up to heightened scrutiny, even among Republicans otherwise supportive of Trump's agenda.
Across the aisle, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen drew headlines when he visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, but his party has debated how much to embrace the Salvadoran national's removal and the due process argument as a rallying cry of opposition to the administration.
Trump had said this spring that he could secure Abrego Garcia's return – contradicting previous remarks made by him and his top aides who said the US did not have the ability to bring him back because he was in the custody of a foreign government, despite the Supreme Court's ruling that the Trump administration must 'facilitate' his return.
'You could get him back. There's a phone on this desk,' ABC News' Terry Moran said to Trump during an exclusive interview that aired in late April.
'I could,' Trump replied.
The administration's posture and legal arguments in the case had consistently frustrated both conservative and liberal jurists alike, who raised alarm bells about officials' apparent disregard for due process rights given their cavalier response to the deportation, which several different administration lawyers described as an 'administrative error' that they were powerless to rectify.
In April, for instance, Bondi insisted that Abrego Garcia 'is not coming back to our country.'
'President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That's the end of the story. If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back,' she said.
But Abrego Garcia's return is far from a guarantee that he will remain in the US long-term. The administration's decision to deport him to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador violated a 2019 order from a judge that said he could not be deported to his home country because of fears that he would face gang violence. That mandate, however, did not preclude the government from removing him to a third country.
Officials have previously said if he were returned to the US, they may deport him to another country or attempt to wipe away the 2019 order. The administration has alleged that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which the government has designated as a foreign terrorist organization, though his attorneys have disputed that claim.
US District Judge Paula Xinis has allowed a fact-finding process to unfold so she can figure out what the government has been doing to comply with her directive that officials bring Abrego Garcia back to the US. But the case had largely faded into the background in recent weeks as that discovery process has dragged on mostly out of public view.
Abrego Garcia arrived in the United States in 2012 as a 16-year-old. And when he was arrested and subsequently handed over to immigration authorities seven years later, he said he feared a possible return to El Salvador.
The immigration judge in the case ultimately ruled in Abrego Garcia's favor and prohibited his removal to his home country.
As the Trump administration continues its aggressive crackdown on immigration, it has been accused of wrongly deporting at least two other men.
Earlier this week, one of the men — a Guatemalan national who was hastily deported to Mexico — returned to the US.
ABC News first reported that Abrego Garcia was en route to the US.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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Associated Press
32 minutes ago
- Associated Press
What it would take to convert a jet from Qatar into Air Force One to safely fly Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump really wants to fly on an upgraded Air Force One — but making that happen could depend on whether he's willing to cut corners with security. As government lawyers sort out the legal arrangement for accepting a luxury jet from the Qatari royal family, another crucial conversation is unfolding about modifying the plane so it's safe for the American president. Installing capabilities equivalent to the decades-old 747s now used as Air Force One would almost certainly consign the project to a similar fate as Boeing's replacement initiative, which has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told lawmakers Thursday that those security modifications would cost less than $400 million but provided no details. Satisfying Trump's desire to use the new plane before the end of his term could require leaving out some of those precautions, however. A White House official said Trump wants the Qatari jet ready as soon as possible while adhering to security standards. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not provide details on equipment issues or the timeline. Trump has survived two assassination attempts, and Iran allegedly also plotted to kill him, so he's well aware of the danger he faces. However, he seems willing to take some chances with security, particularly when it comes to communications. For example, he likes to keep his personal phone handy despite the threat of hacks. He boasted this week that the government got the jet 'for free,' saying, 'We need it as Air Force One until the other ones are done.' Here's a look at what it would take to make the Qatari plane into a presidential transport: What makes a plane worthy of being Air Force One? Air Force One is the call sign for any plane that's carrying the president. The first aircraft to get the designation was a propeller-powered C-54 Skymaster, which ferried Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference in 1945. It featured a conference room with a bulletproof window. Things are a lot more complicated these days. Boeing has spent years stripping down and rebuilding two 747s to replace the versions that have carried presidents for more than three decades. The project is slated to cost more than $5.3 billion and may not be finished before Trump leaves office. A 2021 report made public through the Freedom of Information Act outlines the unclassified requirements for the replacement 747s under construction. At the top of the list — survivability and communications. The government decided more than a decade ago that the new planes had to have four engines so they could remain airborne if one or two fail, said Deborah Lee James, who was Air Force secretary at the time. That creates a challenge because 747s are no longer manufactured, which could make spare parts harder to come by. Air Force One also has to have the highest level of classified communications, anti-jamming capabilities and external protections against foreign surveillance, so the president can securely command military forces and nuclear weapons during a national emergency. It's an extremely sensitive and complex system, including video, voice and data transmissions. James said there are anti-missile measures and shielding against radiation or an electromagnetic pulse that could be caused by a nuclear blast. 'The point is, it remains in flight no matter what,' she said. Will Trump want all the security bells and whistles? If the Qatari plane is retrofitted to presidential standards, it could cost $1.5 billion and take years, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that aren't publicly available. Testifying before Congress this week, Meink discounted such estimates, arguing that some of the costs associated with retrofitting the Qatari plane would have been spent anyway as the Air Force moves to build the long-delayed new presidential planes, including buying aircraft for training and to have spares available if needed. In response, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., said that based on the contract costs for the planes that the Air Force is building, it would cost about $1 billion to strip down the Qatar plane, install encrypted communications, harden its defenses and make other required upgrades. James said simply redoing the wiring means 'you'd have to break that whole thing wide open and almost start from scratch.' Trump, as commander in chief, could waive some of these requirements. He could decide to skip shielding systems from an electromagnetic pulse, leaving his communications more vulnerable in case of a disaster but shaving time off the project. After all, Boeing has already scaled back its original plans for the new 747s. Their range was trimmed by 1,200 nautical miles, and the ability to refuel while airborne was scrapped. Paul Eckloff, a former leader of protection details at the Secret Service, expects the president would get the final say. 'The Secret Service's job is to plan for and mitigate risk,' he said. 'It can never eliminate it.' If Trump does waive some requirements, James said that should be kept under wraps because 'you don't want to advertise to your potential adversaries what the vulnerabilities of this new aircraft might be.' It's unlikely that Trump will want to skimp on the plane's appearance. He keeps a model of a new Air Force One in the Oval Office, complete with a darker color scheme that echoes his personal jet instead of the light blue design that's been used for decades. What happens next? Trump toured the Qatari plane in February when it was parked at an airport near Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort. Air Force chief of staff Gen. David Allvin was there, too. The U.S. official said the jet needs maintenance but not more than what would be expected of a four-engine plane of its complexity. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it would be irresponsible to put the president and national security equipment aboard the Qatari plane 'without knowing that the aircraft is fully capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.' 'It's a waste of taxpayer dollars,' she said. Meanwhile, Boeing's project has been hampered by stress corrosion cracks on the planes and excessive noise in the cabins from the decompression system, among other issues that have delayed delivery, according to a Government Accountability Office report released last year. Boeing referred questions to the Air Force, which said in a statement that it's working with the aircraft manufacturer to find ways to accelerate the delivery of at least one of the 747s. Even so, the aircraft will have to be tested and flown in real-world conditions to ensure no other issues. James said it remains to be seen how Trump would handle any of those challenges. 'The normal course of business would say there could be delays in certifications,' she said. 'But things seem to get waived these days when the president wants it.' ___ AP writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
CNN
34 minutes ago
- CNN
GOP senators' top concerns with Trump's big agenda bill, in their own words
Republicans have set an ambitious deadline of trying to pass President Donald Trump's sweeping agenda through Congress by the fourth of July, kickstarting an intensive negotiation in the US Senate where Republican lawmakers are all over the map when it comes to the specific changes they want to see made to the House-passed bill. The challenge ahead for Senate Majority Leader John Thune is he can only afford to lose three votes, but he must find consensus between conservatives in his conference who are pushing for more spending cuts and others who already fear that some of the cuts to Medicaid and rollbacks to clean energy tax credits that were a cornerstone of the House bill went too far. It's a herculean task and one made more complicated by Elon Musk publicly blasting the House bill. Adding to the challenge is the fact that whatever the Senate settles on will need to go back to the House and win approval there before the President can sign it and pass it into law. Here are senators describing in their own words their concerns and what they want to see changed in the weeks ahead. The interviews were conducted in the first week in June after lawmakers returned from recess. The transcripts below have been lightly edited for clarity. Why it matters: New work requirements for Medicaid and changes to how states can levy provider taxes made up a significant amount of the ways to save money in the House bill. Speeding up how quickly those work requirements were implemented also went a long way to secure support from the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Yet a handful of GOP senators say they need to look closely at how the changes could affect their states and their constituents. And some Republicans in the Senate are warning that the changes may need to be scaled back, a potential problem for House conservatives. 'I'm concerned about people who are here legally, residents of my state, citizens of my state who are working and would lose health care coverage. I am not going to vote for that … There are a host of concerns but Medicaid is the big kahuna and that is where I am training my focus and my fire. I've got 1.3 million Missourians on Medicaid, or CHIP, so that's the hill to fight on.' CNN: 'Do you have concerns about the changes to the provider tax on the Medicaid side?' Justice: 'The provider tax is really important. I mean, you know, to to a lot of states, you know that we, we, we can't let that just get undermined, because you get that undermined and everything you can hurt a lot of our nursing homes a lot.' Reporter: 'My follow up question is does the House bill cut Medicaid to the bone? When you say that, are you worried that they're gonna have bigger cuts are you fine with the House as it is?' Justice: 'I do not think it cuts it to the bone, or any of the bone, but but there's, you know, you get you gotta get through all the fine print and everything, because there could be things that absolutely hurt people and everything.' 'I'm still going through the issues that I see as problematic. I'm looking at the changes in education programs like Pell grants. I've told you many times that I'm looking at the impact on rural hospitals. I support the work requirements that are in the bill. I think that makes sense.' 'There is a lot of concern. I did a couple roundtables at home, and so, you know, we talked about it, where I can look and see more deeply. There were some nuances to it that I hadn't actually understood before that are in the House bill. We haven't had a chance to digest how it's going to impact our hospitals.' 'I've said before that I want to see very – I want to make sure that we're not harming hospitals that we just spent COVID money to save. So, that's part of it, but I also care a lot about, with disabilities and so, Medicaid is an important issue. So, we'll see how, what the Senate does and I'll be lobbying to try to get something that's acceptable to me.' 'We have to take a look at states that have expanded Medicaid, to make sure that we're making a smart decision for millions of people who are under expansion – North Carolina, 620,000 Medicaid recipients alone. So, we've got to work on getting that right, giving the state legislatures and others a chance to react to it, make a recommendation, or make a change. And that's all the implementation stuff that we're beginning to talk about now that we're in possession of the bill.' Why it matters: In the Senate, a handful of lawmakers have made clear they don't think the House bill does enough to curb the country's spending problems. The argument was bolstered this week by two things. First, Musk attacked members for backing the bill he argued didn't go far enough. Then, the Congressional Budget Office released a report that they anticipated the bill in its totality would increase the country's deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. The challenge here is that finding additional cuts that 51 senators can support and 218 House Republicans can sign off on is tough to do. Some of the largest savings that could have been made to programs like Medicaid were rejected in the House already by swing district Republicans who argued that the cuts could harm their constituents. Johnson: 'I talked to the President today… he's encouraged me to support the bill and I said – listen, we all want him to succeed but my bottom line is we need to seriously address the debt and deficit issue.' CNN: 'Would you be open to passing something close to the House bill now with a promise of changes in the future?' Johnson: 'Listen, I want to help the president succeed in this thing so I've got a pretty open mind. My requirement has always been a commitment to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending and a process to achieve and maintain it.' 'Come the end of September, when our fiscal year ends, the deficit's going to be $2.2 trillion. That's just not conservative. They're borrowing $5 trillion, that means they're anticipating the following year being over $2 trillion as well, so it's just not a conservative thing to do, and I've told them I can't support the bill if they're together. If they were to separate out and take the debt ceiling off that, I very much could consider the rest of the bill.' Curtis: 'If you look at the House bill, just to simplify it a little bit, we're going to spend in the next 10 years about $20 trillion more than the revenue we bring in, and they're cutting $1.5 trillion out of $20 trillion. Most of us wouldn't do that in our businesses, in our homes, and certainly don't do it in the state of Utah. And so that's a big concern to me.' CNN: 'So any substantial changes to get your support?' Curtis: 'I'm not drawing red lines, right, like I'm being careful. But I think we have to do our best work to get my support.' Why it matters: At the end of the House's precarious negotiations, members of the House Freedom caucus got assurances that many of the clean energy tax credits that were part of former President Joe Biden's legacy would be rolled back and that the process for ending them would begin sooner than the original legislative text had laid out. It was a huge victory for conservatives. But, in the Senate, a handful of lawmakers are worried that the rollbacks could affect projects in their states that create jobs and income for their constituents. 'On the energy tax credits – as you know, obviously a great deal of focus on oil and natural gas in the state, but also on the clean energy side as well.' 'I've made clear that I think these investments that we have made as a country in some of these clean energy technologies, we're seeing that play forward in a lot of states, and so let's be smart about these, let's make sure if you're going to do phase-outs of this, that they're reasonable phase-outs. So I'm going to be advocating for that.' 'We're going to pay attention to how it affects Kansas. One of the issues is I think there is a lot of Senate sentiment that it's too rapid.' 'Look, the key there is to go at it through the lens of a businessperson. It's easy, you know, from a political standpoint, to cancel programs that are out there. We need to be smart about where capital has been deployed to minimize the impact on the message we're sending –that we'd send businesses, that every two or four years we have massive changes in our priorities for energy transition. We just got to get it right. It doesn't mean that I think we have to extend every program, necessarily, but I do think we have to hold businesses harmless for the programs that are there, and then calculate what the economic effect is going to be. If we don't – this is not all their spending, there's economic growth behind a lot of these as well, as we've seen in North Carolina.' Why it matters: A group of New York and California Republicans fought hard in the House to increase how much in state and local taxes constituents can deduct on their federal returns. The deduction cap went from $10,000 to $40,000 for people who fall below a certain income threshold, but the benefit really helps voters in high-tax states. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson's majority is built on winning some of these high-tax districts. And several members in his conference made it clear they'd vote against the bill without a boost to SALT. In the Senate, the politics are very different. The provision is costly and there aren't any Republican senators representing high-tax states like New York, California, New Jersey or Illinois. Therefore, there is a lot of grumbling from GOP senators who would rather spend the billions it costs to raise the threshold on another area of the tax code. 'There's not a single senator from New York or New Jersey or California and so there's not a strong mood in the Senate Republican caucus right now to do $353 billion for states that basically the other states subsidize. But that being said, you know, like I say on every issue, nothing is resolved until it's resolved and we are working things out.' CNN: 'Is there any way the $40,000 cap survives?' Tillis: 'I hope not. But, you know, I'll have to that is one where I don't. I believe when I draw a red line, I stick to it. I'm not willing to draw a red line there, but I would be a lot happier, in total, I'd be a lot happier seeing that number come down. I've said it before. It's because it's personal to me. I took all the criticism for making North Carolina not a SALT state, and now you're telling me I've got to subsidize the bad decisions made in Albany and Sacramento. So it's at the end of the day, if they do their work in their state, they should be talking to state senators, not US senators, to fix that problem.'
San Francisco Chronicle
34 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump repeats threats to California over transgender track state champion
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump targeted California's education funding again after a transgender student won two high school track and field events at the state meet Sunday. AB Hernandez, 16, became the center of political controversy overnight because she is transgender and running in girls track and field in California. Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the state of California in a May 27 Truth Social post prior to the meet because of her presence and issued a similar threat for 'large scale fines' Tuesday after she was crowned a California state champion in girls triple jump and high jump. The California Interscholastic Federation adopted regulations in 2013 allowing students to engage in high school sports 'in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on a student's records.' The same year, California lawmakers codified into state law that students could participate in school programs consistent with their gender identity. After Trump's May 27 threat, the CIF changed its rules to allow the athlete with the next-best qualifying mark in three events to participate and to issue a duplicate medal to the next-best finisher behind Hernandez in those events. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon threatened legal action Monday against California public schools if they continue allowing transgender athletes to compete in accordance with their gender identity. The attack on California's education funding over transgender girls' participation in girls' sports teams came as little surprise after the Justice Department filed suit against Maine in April for a similar policy. The White House argues policies like those in California and Maine are discriminatory, and therefore allow it to terminate federal K-12 funding to those states. Trump ordered investigations into all three, but has moved more swiftly in its dispute with Maine, whose governor publicly challenged Trump over the policy. Several education policy researchers and attorneys previously told the Chronicle that Maine is a test case, intended to see whether the Trump administration can subvert the normal process for cutting funds — as well as terminate all education funding to a state, rather than a more targeted cut. The Education Department is investigating California, Minnesota and Oregon's high school athletic associations, individual school districts in Oregon and Washington, the University of Pennsylvania and San Jose State University for allowing transgender athletes to compete on teams consistent with their gender identities. The Education Department confirmed Tuesday that it has opened an investigation into a Connecticut school system for allowing transgender athletes to compete on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. California received about $8 billion in federal funding for K-12 education in the 2024-25 school year, about 6% of its total budget, according to the state Department of Education. Of that, $2.5 billion was for low-income students under Title I, $1.5 billion for special education and students with disabilities, $157 million for English as a second language programs, and $5.7 million for nutritional services. To terminate funding, the Trump administration will need to argue that allowing athletics participation based on gender identity rather than sex assigned at birth violates Title IX. Several federal courts have found the opposite: that if a school tells a transgender athlete they can't participate in certain sports or use bathrooms in accordance with their gender identity, it is discriminating against that student on the basis of sex.
