Key moments that led to smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego García

Boston Globe

19 hours ago

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March 28, 2019
: Police in Maryland detain Abrego García as he stands outside a Home Depot, a popular hangout for day laborers seeking work. The incident prompts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal proceedings against Abrego García and a claim by a Prince George's County police detective that Abrego García is a member of the transnational gang MS-13. Soon afterward, that police detective, Ivan Mendez, is suspended after being accused of tipping off a sex worker he had hired about an ongoing investigation into a brothel she ran. He is later criminally indicted and fired.
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Oct. 10, 2019
: U.S. Immigration Judge David M. Jones grants Abrego García's application for withholding of removal, which prohibited his deportation to El Salvador. The judge found his life would be in danger if he were sent back, because Abrego García testified that he fled that country as a teenager after the Barrio 18 gang tried to extort his mother's pupusa shop and threatened to kill him if he didn't join.
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Nov. 30, 2022
: Abrego García is stopped for speeding near Cookeville, Tennessee, with about eight other people inside the SUV. During the encounter, Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers suspect Abrego García of carrying undocumented immigrants from Texas to the Maryland area for money. A state trooper runs Abrego García's name, which by then is in a federal database of suspected gang members, and sees an instruction to notify federal authorities, according to the Tennessee Highway Patrol. But federal officials say there is no need to detain Abrego García, the agency said. The encounter ends with just a warning issued to Abrego García for driving with an expired license.
March 12, 2025
: ICE agents stop Abrego García while he is driving to pick up his wife's two eldest children from a school bus stop. The couple's now 5-year-old nonverbal son is in the back seat as Abrego García is detained.
March 15
: Abrego García is among 23 Salvadorans and 238 Venezuelans placed on three planes and sent to El Salvador despite a judge's order that those flights turn around or stay on the ground in the United States. They are sent to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
March 24
: Abrego García's family files suit in Maryland federal court, seeking his return.
March 31
: The Trump administration acknowledges in a court filing that Abrego García was 'removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error.'
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April 4
: U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis orders the government to 'facilitate and effectuate' the return of Abrego García by April 7, which the Trump administration later appeals.
April 7
: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit denies the Trump administration's request to stay Xinis's order. 'The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process,' the appeals court wrote.
April 10
: The U.S. Supreme Court largely affirms Xinis's order, writing: 'The order properly requires the Government to 'facilitate' Abrego García's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.'
April 14
: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele meets with Trump and administration officials in the Oval Office. When asked if he would be willing to send Abrego García back to the United States, Bukele calls him a terrorist. 'I smuggle him into the United States?' Bukele says. 'Of course I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?'
April 16
: Details of Abrego García's 2022 traffic stop appear in the Tennessee Star, a right-leaning news site, citing anonymous sources. Trump administration officials soon release a Department of Homeland Security investigative report regarding the traffic stop.
April 17
: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit denies the Trump administration's second appeal, over an order Xinis issued that requires the administration to show how it is facilitating Abrego García's return. The opinion, written by Reagan nominee Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, said, 'This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.' Later the same day, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) visits with Abrego García in El Salvador.
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April 18
: Van Hollen says Abrego García, who was transferred to a low-security prison, 'was traumatized by being at CECOT and fearful of many of the prisoners in other cell blocks who called out to him and taunted him in various ways.' In a post on Truth Social the same day, Trump says Abrego García has 'MS-13 tattooed into his knuckles.' He holds a photo of Abrego García's hand, which has a marijuana leaf on the first finger, a smiley face on the second, a cross on the third and a skull on the fourth. Superimposed onto the photo are M, S, 1 and 3.
April 29
: Trump defends his administration's approach to the Abrego García case in an interview with ABC News, during which he repeatedly asserts that Abrego García is a member of MS-13. The president suggests that he 'could' help facilitate Abrego García's return to the U.S. from custody in El Salvador. 'I could. … And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that,' Trump told ABC News's Terry Moran. 'But he's not.'
May 16
: Xinis tells a Justice Department lawyer during a hearing that each of several depositions given by Trump administration officials 'to varying degrees, were an exercise in utter frustration.' The comment comes after the administration repeatedly invoked the 'state secrets' privilege to avoid disclosing information about its efforts, or lack thereof, to facilitate Abrego García's release from custody in El Salvador. In D.C., U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg gives the Trump administration a week to identify its efforts to return Abrego García, as well as 137 Venezuelan men deported to an El Salvador prison under the wartime Alien Enemies Act.
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June 6
: The Trump administration announces that Abrego Garcia has been indicted on human smuggling charges stemming from the 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee.