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U.S. Returns Abrego Garcia From El Salvador to Face Criminal Charges
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland and legally protected from deportation, had been in Salvadoran custody since March 15.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the man at the center of a political and legal maelstrom after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, was flown back to the United States on Friday to face charges of transporting undocumented migrants.
The stunning move by the Trump administration, after months of fighting any effort to return him, could end the most high-profile court battle over President Trump’s authority to rapidly seize and deport immigrants.
The decision to pull Mr. Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador and instead put him on trial in an American courtroom could provide an offramp for the Trump administration, which has bitterly opposed court orders requiring the government to take steps to release him after his wrongful removal in March.
The 10-page indictment — filed in Federal District Court in Nashville in May and unsealed Friday — might also be an effort to save face: Bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back to face criminal charges, rather than complying with three federal courts, including the Supreme Court, allows the White House to avoid a legal confrontation while pressing its claims that he is a criminal who poses a threat to American citizens.
“Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said at a news conference in Washington. “He was a smuggler of humans and children and women.”
She added, “This is what American justice looks like.”
Ms. Bondi went on to level accusations against Mr. Abrego Garcia that were not included in the indictment, claiming that co-conspirators told investigators he had helped “minor children” and gang members during dozens of trips around the country. She linked him to more serious crimes, including murders and the abuse of women — even though he has only been charged in connection with smuggling.
She also claimed, without providing evidence, that his seemingly law-abiding life in Maryland as a contractor, father and husband was a cover for criminal activities spanning nine years. Ms. Bondi, who spearheaded the administration’s public relations campaign to discredit Mr. Abrego Garcia during the court battle, predicted he would be convicted and returned to El Salvador for imprisonment.
Ms. Bondi declined to say when the Tennessee investigation into Mr. Abrego Garcia was opened. His indictment was filed more than two weeks ago, on May 21, and unsealed Friday after he arrived in the United States.
The deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said he believed the indictment would most likely render moot the ongoing lawsuit brought by Mr. Abrego Garcia’s family to force his release from Salvadoran custody.
Wendy Ramos, a spokeswoman for El Salvador’s president, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said they welcomed their day in court and pointed out that the government’s decision to return him to the United States undercut its longstanding efforts to keep him in El Salvador.
“Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along — that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,” said Andrew Rossman, a lawyer for Mr. Abrego Garcia. “It’s now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees to all persons.”
Even though the Trump administration has repeatedly accused Mr. Abrego Garcia of belonging to MS-13 — which has been designated as a terrorist organization — a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in April that the defendant had been deprived of his rights by being wrongly deported.
“The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13,” the panel wrote. “Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process.”
Since the start of the case, administration officials have sought to depict Mr. Abrego Garcia, a metal worker who has lived illegally in the United States without criminal charges for years, as a member of MS-13. The charges filed against him on Friday accused him of belonging to the gang and taking part in a conspiracy to “transport thousands of undocumented aliens” across the United States.
In court papers seeking his pretrial detention, prosecutors said Mr. Abrego Garcia had been part of a trafficking conspiracy and had played “a significant role” in smuggling immigrants, including unaccompanied minors.
If convicted, Mr. Abrego Garcia could face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each person he transported, the papers said, a penalty that would go “well beyond the remainder of the defendant's life.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia has been in Salvadoran custody since March 15 when he was flown, along with scores of other migrants, into the hands of jailers at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious prison known as CECOT. He was later moved to another facility in El Salvador.
For nearly three months, his lawyers have been trying every legal strategy to enforce court orders demanding that the Trump administration “facilitate” his release from El Salvador.
From the beginning of the case, officials have acknowledged that Mr. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in violation of a previous court order that expressly barred his being sent to the country. But the Justice Department, acting on behalf of the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, has not given an inch beyond that admission, saying only that if Mr. Abrego Garcia presented himself at the U.S. border, officials would “facilitate” his re-entry to the country.
Department lawyers have also spent weeks stonewalling an effort by Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing the case, to get answers to the question of what the White House has done, and planned to do, to seek Mr. Abrego Garcia’s freedom. The administration’s serial refusals to respond to inquiries about its own behavior in the case has so annoyed Judge Xinis that this week she allowed Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to seek sanctions against the government.
According to the indictment, the case against Mr. Abrego Garcia dates to Nov. 30, 2022 when he was stopped for speeding by the Tennessee Highway Patrol on Interstate 40 East, in Putnam County, Tenn. Officers determined that the Chevrolet Suburban he was driving had been altered with “an after-market third row of seats designed to carry additional passengers,” the indictment said.
It also noted that there were “nine Hispanic males packed into the S.U.V.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia told the officers that he and his passengers had been in St. Louis for the past two weeks doing construction work, according to the indictment. But a subsequent investigation, prosecutors said, revealed that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s cellphone and license plate reader data showed that he had been in Texas that morning and nowhere near St. Louis for the past weeks.
Moreover, the indictment said, none of the people in the vehicle “had luggage or even tools consistent with construction work.”
Prosecutors said that the traffic stop in Tennessee was not the first time that Mr. Abrego Garcia had engaged in immigrant smuggling, which, it said, was his “primary source of income.” They added that he had transported about “50 undocumented aliens” a month across the country for several years.
The Trump administration is facing court orders to facilitate the return of other immigrants who were recently expelled from the United States under wrongful — or even questionable — circumstances.
On Wednesday, in a rare example of compliance, the White House brought back a gay Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico this year in violation of an order forbidding immigrants from being sent to countries not their own.
Annie Correal contributed reporting.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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