Kilmar Abrego Garcia being returned to U.S. to face charges of transporting illegal immigrants
Social Sharing
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador became a political flashpoint in the Trump administration's stepped-up immigration enforcement, is being returned to the United States to face criminal charges related to what the Trump administration say was a massive human smuggling operation that brought immigrants into the country illegally.
He is expected to be prosecuted in the U.S. and, if convicted, will be returned to his home country in El Salvador at the conclusion of the case, officials said Friday.
"This is what American justice looks like," Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday in announcing the return of Abrego Garcia and the criminal charges.
The charges stem from a 2022 vehicle stop in which the Tennessee Highway Patrol suspected Abrego Garcia of human trafficking. A report released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in April states that none of the people in the vehicle had luggage, while they listed the same address as Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime, and the officers allowed him to drive on with only a warning about an expired driver's licence, according to the DHS report. The report said he was travelling from Texas to Maryland, via Missouri, to bring in people to perform construction work.
In response to the report's release in April, Abrego Garcia's wife said in a statement that he sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites, "so it's entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with others in the vehicle. He was not charged with any crime or cited for any wrongdoing."
The Trump administration has been publicizing Abrego Garcia's interactions with police over the years, despite a lack of corresponding criminal charges, while it faces a federal court order and calls from some in Congress to return him to the U.S.
Abrego Garcia 'deserves his day in court,' lawyer says
Authorities in Tennessee released video of a 2022 traffic stop last month. The body-camera footage shows a calm and friendly exchange between officers with the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Officers then discussed among themselves their suspicions of human trafficking because nine people were travelling without luggage. One of the officers said, "He's hauling these people for money." Another said he had $1,400 US in an envelope.
An attorney for Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a statement after the footage's release in May that he saw no evidence of a crime in the released footage.
"But the point is not the traffic — stop it's that Mr. Abrego Garcia deserves his day in court," Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
The move comes days after the Trump administration complied with a court order to return a Guatemalan man deported to Mexico despite his fears of being harmed there.
The man, identified in court papers as O.C.G, was the first person known to have been returned to U.S. custody after deportation since the start of U.S. President Donald Trump's second term.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Post
40 minutes ago
- National Post
Raymond J. de Souza: This Trump-Musk cage match could be seen coming
WASHINGTON, D.C. — More or less on schedule, U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are headed for a steel cage match. The steel will be more expensive now due to tariffs, but spectacles don't come cheap. Article content This past week's Trump-Musk breakup could be dismissed as simply the latest episode of a professional-wrestling-reality-show presidency. The script is as old as baby-oiled wrestlers in the ring and as current as the Axe-body-sprayed young men in the audience. Article content Article content Article content Two great titans — The World's Richest Man™ and The World's Most Powerful Man™ — joined forces to form a fearsome tag-team. Call the alliance The World's Most Manly Men™, with rotating mouthpiece managers in their corner, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson and the like. Article content Article content The World's Most Manly Men™ steamroller over weak opponents at first to establish their dominance. Trump-Musk dismantle overseas aid to the poor; Trump-Musk take down funding for Aids prevention and treatment in Africa. Next up, The World's Most Manly Men™ grapple with stronger opponents, preferably effete and somehow suspect; Trump-Musk battle public broadcasting, then Columbia, then Harvard. Article content Eventually though, the new tag-team champions run into formidable opponents — the judiciary, the bond market, the American voter's preference for big government without having to pay for it. Victory is no longer easy nor assured. Will The World's Most Manly Men™ prevail? Article content The final step comes as surely as celebrities gather like moths around the pro-wrestling flame. The World's Most Manly Men™ must turn on each other. The spittle-flecked air is filled with cries of ingratitude, betrayal and treachery. The ambush then comes. The allies turn on each other. A low blow is landed — Trump is a reckless spendthrift! A steel chair is used to devastating effect — Musk's government subsidies will be cut off! Article content Article content The erstwhile allies are headed for a showdown. Tickets are sold to the clash of the titans; The World's Most Manly Men™ will fight each other in a cage match. Article content Article content That may well suffice as an explanation for the latest melodrama here in Washington, the latest staging of circuses in the declining imperial capital. But it overlooks a deeper division at the heart of the Trump project, a division advertised as brazenly as the golden Trump brand on a failed casino or a skip-the-line visa. It was right there in the name: Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Article content Efficiency is what Elon Musk desires, but it runs counter to the heart of the Trump project. Efficiency is what has driven globalization, automation, information technology and open trade, where more efficient production enables cheaper goods and services. Efficiency is the altar at which Musk and the tech-bros worship. Efficiency is the AI future where goods are cheap and services may well be cheaper still; The World's Most Richest Man™ takes his billions and employment shrinks dramatically.
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
Trump shrugs off Musk feud: ‘Not even thinking about Elon'
U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to brush off his public feud with former close ally Elon Musk on Friday, saying he's not even thinking about him. Trump is even said to be considering selling, or giving away, the red Tesla he recently purchased from Musk.
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
He can't quit him — easily. Why SpaceX could complicate the Trump-Musk split
Billions of dollars lost in government contracts. A slew of regulatory headaches. These are just some of the ramifications Elon Musk could face over his fallout with U.S. President Donald Trump. The two men may have personally split, at least for now. But if Trump is seeking to retaliate against the tech billionaire, severing the relationship between Musk's many companies and the U.S. government could prove difficult, analysts say. "I would say the president has more cards than Musk does, but it doesn't mean that [Musk] doesn't have any," said Peter Hays, a lecturer of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute. Both sides have "all kinds of leverage on each other," added Dan Grazier, senior fellow and program director at the D.C.-based Stimson Center, a think-tank focused on international security. The public fallout came after Musk repeatedly criticized Trump's spending bill. Trump eventually lashed back, posting on Truth Social that the easiest way to save "Billions and Billion of Dollars" would be to "terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts." However, those threats might not be so simple to implement. SpaceX, satellite contracts SpaceX has $15 billion US worth of contracts from NASA for the company's Falcon 9 rockets and its development of the multipurpose Starship rocket system, tapped to land NASA astronauts on the moon this decade. The company has also been awarded billions of dollars to launch most of the Pentagon's national security satellites into space while it builds a massive spy satellite constellation. That's why, if Trump cancels those contracts, SpaceX would have to seriously rethink its business model, Grazier says. Musk "needs the government to keep his company operating as they are," he said. But the U.S. government is also reliant on SpaceX, he says. For example, it's the only U.S. company capable right now of transporting crews to and from the International Space Station, using its four-person Dragon capsules. "Trump needs Elon Musk in pretty much the exact same way that Elon Musk needs President Trump, as far as SpaceX goes," Grazier said. "It's not like the United States has a credible alternative to SpaceX right now as far as space launch goes," he said. "And the United States needs reliable space launch capabilities." WATCH | F eud explodes into public view: Threats, insults as Trump-Musk feud explodes into public view 1 day ago Duration 2:27 Tearing up SpaceX contracts would have a huge domino effect across a lot of the government's critical functions in space, according to Clayton Swope, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And those functions are "most closely centred around the Pentagon and NASA," he told Bloomberg News. But if Trump holds off on cancelling SpaceX contracts, and is looking for another way to poke at Musk, he could put the squeeze on Musk's companies through the government's regulatory agencies, some experts say. "Those can all be leverage points for the administration," said Cary Coglianese, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Penn program on regulation. Last year, Musk was waging at least 11 separate regulatory or legal battles with the Biden administration or independent federal agencies related to his business empire, according to NBC News. This might have been why, in part, Musk eventually endorsed Trump, who had pledged during the presidential campaign to slash regulations. How Trump's tax bill ignited his feud with Musk | Hanomansing Tonight 1 day ago Duration 7:21 Yet Trump could now pressure those same agencies to make Musk's life difficult. Just some of the regulators Musk's business empire must deal with include the Federal Communications Commission for his satellite internet service Starlink, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for Tesla, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for SpaceX. The FAA, under pressure from Trump, or to curry his favour, could say it's not going to approve any SpaceX launch permits, says Roger Nober, director of the Regulatory Studies Center, also at George Washington University. For Tesla, for example, Trump could pressure regulators to deny necessary approvals of its autonomous driving program, or could renew investigations into the safety of its full self-driving software, some analysts told ABC News. "If full self-driving were to be invalidated, that would be a huge hit to Tesla stock and to Musk," Gordon Johnson, CEO and founder of the data firm GLJ Research, told ABC. Although the courts shouldn't tolerate such actions if they are shown to be vindictive, the president wouldn't necessarily need a "litigation-proof strategy to really mess up" Musk's life, Coglianese said. It could still be "very painful and problematic" for Musk, while courts sorted out the issues, he said. "And if Musk's operations get delayed or disrupted, that can mean real money." Nober says he believes that any lasting regulatory change against Musk's companies would be difficult to implement, given his very public spat with Trump and that the president said he's going to punish his one-time friend. "If they then initiate regulatory action that's intended punish any of Musk's business… it's going to be vulnerable to challenge on the theory that it was arbitrary," he said. However, there may be other minor administrative regulatory roadblocks that government agencies could impose on Musk that would be difficult to challenge in court, Nober says. "They can make life difficult" for Musk, he said. On Thursday, amid their war of words, shares of Tesla plunged more than 14 per cent, leaving $150 billion US of the electric automaker's value erased by the end of trading day. The plunge was probably because Tesla, like a lot of Musk's companies, have a lot of little things they deal with, with a lot of regulatory bodies, Nober says. "Just making those more difficult, or slowing them down, or reviewing them, or taking longer to turn things around, has a cumulative impact," he said.
