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How a traffic stop exploded into human smuggling charges for Kilmar Abrego Garcia
How a traffic stop exploded into human smuggling charges for Kilmar Abrego Garcia
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in the US to face federal charges
The Maryland man who was mistakenly deported is accused of making more than 100 trips to move illegal immigrants across the country.
NASHVILLE − The Chevrolet Suburban was heading east along Interstate 40 when it caught the attention of a Tennessee State Trooper, who pulled the driver over for speeding near Cookeville, Tennessee.
Behind the wheel was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who had arrived in the United States illegally a decade earlier from El Salvador. Inside the vehicle were nine other passengers, all Hispanic men, according to court documents.
Abrego Garcia told the officer he was taking the men back to Maryland from St. Louis, where he said they had been working on a construction site.
But police were suspicious.
None of the passengers had any identification or luggage, there was no sign of tools or construction equipment, and several of the men gave the same Maryland address when asked where they were heading. After a few minutes, police allowed the SUV to continue its journey, issuing only a warning citation to Abrego Garcia for driving on an expired license.
More than two years later, that routine traffic stop on Nov. 30, 2022 in Cookeville, a city 80 miles east of Nashville, is at the center of a federal criminal case involving allegations of an international immigrant smuggling ring and criticism of President Donald Trump's hardline policy of deporting migrants who are in the United States illegally.
A federal grand jury in Nashville indicted Abrego Garcia on May 21 on charges that he was part of a conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants for financial gain. He will appear June 13 in U.S. District Court in Nashville to respond to the charges. If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison for each person transported. Prosecutors say he made more than 100 trips.
Related: Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia? The answer is found on the streets where he lived and worked
The charges are the latest chapter in the saga against the sheet metal worker and father of three, whom the Trump administration deported to El Salvador in March in violation of a prior court ruling that barred the government from sending him back to his native country.
Government attorneys, who acknowledged in court records that Abrego Garcia had been mistakenly deported, had argued for weeks the U.S. had no authority to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States from the Salvadoran prison where he was being held. They abruptly reversed course and flew him back to the United States on June 6, the same day the indictment against him was unsealed and the charges were made public.
Lawyers for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nashville, who are prosecuting the case, contend Abrego Garcia should remain jailed while the case is argued. Abrego Garcia's criminal lawyers, from the Federal Public Defender's office in Nashville, argue the government has not given enough evidence to warrant his detention.
'Mr. Abrego Garcia asks the Court for what he has been denied the past several months — due process,' his attorneys wrote in a June 11 filing.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes will consider that question during the hearing on June 13.
Meanwhile, other questions continue to swirl around the case, along with concerns that politics may have influenced the decision to file the criminal charges.
Why did the government wait for more than two years to charge Abrego Garcia if it had evidence that he was involved in an international smuggling ring? Why did the Trump administration file the charges only after it faced a flood of criticism for deporting Abrego Garcia in violation of the prior court order? And why is the case being prosecuted in Tennessee instead of Maryland, where Abrego Garcia was living when he was pulled over by immigration agents in March and then deported to El Salvador?
The Trump administration, which has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the violent gang MS-13, has pointed to the case to justify its decision to expel him from the United States. The administration also has blamed former President Joe Biden for delays in pursuing the criminal charges, arguing Biden had no interest in taking action against migrants who were in the United States illegally.
Maryland case: Judge scolds Trump administration in Abrego Garcia case: 'Exercise in utter frustration'
Attorney General Pam Bondi, asked at a recent news conference in Washington, D.C., about what changed since the traffic stop in 2022, responded: 'What has changed is Donald Trump is now president of the United States, and our borders are again secure.'
Abrego Garcia's immigration attorney has raised questions about the government's motivation for filing the criminal charges.
'The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order,' said his immigration attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, who has represented Abrego Garcia in his civil case challenging his deportation. 'Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they're bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him.'
'This is an abuse of power, not justice,' he said.
The criminal case also reportedly led to a high-profile resignation in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tennessee.
The day Abrego Garcia was indicted, Ben Schrader, chief of the criminal division for the Middle District of Tennessee, resigned. A 15-year veteran of the U.S. Attorney's Office, Schrader had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the administration's actions, and the indictment was "the final straw," a person familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Schrader has declined requests for comment.
Why were the criminal charges filed in Tennessee?
In criminal cases like the one against Abrego Garcia, prosecutors need to point to one 'overt act' that shows the defendant participated in the conspiracy.
'They charge an overarching conspiracy, and then they pick one overt act of the conspiracy to give the court jurisdiction,' said longtime Nashville defense attorney David Raybin, who is not representing anyone in the case and is not affiliated with it in any way.
In this case, Abrego Garcia's stop with the Tennessee Highway Patrol in 2022 is that 'overt act.'
The indictment against Abrego Garcia alleges that, from 2016 through 2025, he and other unnamed people conspired to bring undocumented migrants into the United States from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and elsewhere, passing through Mexico before crossing into Texas. At times, members of MS-13 accompanied him on the trips, the indictment states.
Prosecutors say Abrego Garcia's role in the conspiracy was typically transporting people once they were within the U.S., typically picking them up in the Houston area.
When he was pulled over in Tennessee, Abrego Garcia told police his passengers had been working at a construction site in St. Louis. But the indictment states data from license plate readers showed the vehicle had not been in St. Louis in the past year but had been in Houston the previous week.
Raybin predicted Abrego Garcia's attorneys will ask that the case be dismissed because of the amount of time that has elapsed since the alleged crimes took place.
'What you anticipate is the defense saying, 'We think the case should be dismissed on due process grounds. You severely prejudiced my right to defend my client, because a lot of evidence is about four or five years old, the witnesses are gone,' that kind of thing,' Raybin said.
'In other words, the question would be, where have you been for six years?' he said.
Right now, it's not clear how much evidence the government has against Abrego Garcia.
'You cannot discern the quality or the amount of proof that the government has from an indictment, because, by definition, it is only required to state the charge and one factual predicate act,' Raybin said.
Prosecutors say they know who some of the co-conspirators in the case are, although they are unnamed in the indictment. Raybin said in general, prosecutors want to have more evidence than just the testimony of co-conspirators.
'As a practical matter, you're going to want to have something just beyond a bunch of jailhouse snitches, who themselves are at risk of deportation,' Raybin said. 'That, to me, is an enormous issue of the case.'
And while the case has been politicized in the media and by government officials, Raybin didn't think that would be a prudent strategy in the courtroom.
'I think the defense will probably start raising the specter that this is a political case or political witch hunt,' he said. 'As a lawyer, I would never do that unless I was holding four aces.'
He compared it to another recent high-profile case in the Middle District of Tennessee.
'You know, cries of political witch hunts only go so far,' he said, citing a political corruption case against Glen Casada, Tennessee's former House speaker who was recently convicted of federal crimes. 'In the Casada case, it went nowhere.'
Michael Collins is a national correspondent for USA TODAY. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.
Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him with questions, tips or story ideas at emealins@
