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Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, right, stands with supporters during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) | AP
from https://www.politico.com/
The Justice Department said Kilmar Abrego García was in U.S. custody after weeks of resisting court orders to return him to the United States
The Justice Department has brought human smuggling charges against a wrongly deported Salvadoran man whose removal to a notorious gang prison ignited a standoff with federal courts, according to an indictment made public Friday.
The charges against Kilmar Abrego García, stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, mean he could face prosecution in the United States and possible deportation to another country.
They come weeks after the Supreme Court ordered Trump officials to facilitate Abrego García’s return from the megaprison where Justice Department lawyers admitted he’d been erroneously sent. The president, his lawyers and Cabinet members have resisted bringing him back, but the indictment released Friday said he was in U.S. custody.
The 2022 incident in Tennessee that appears to have led to the indictment initially ended with a warning from local authorities to renew his expired license.
“Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant and they agreed to return him to our country," Attorney General Pam Bondi said at a news conference Friday afternoon to announce the charges. "We’re grateful to President Bukele for agreeing to return him to our country.”
The Trump administration sent Abrego García, who has lived in Maryland for many years and is married to a U.S. citizen, and more than 200 others to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador in March. While the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the legality of Trump’s decision to transport the migrants to El Salvador, the justices did find that Abrego García in particular should not have been sent there.
His deportation violated a standing court order forbidding U.S. officials from sending him to his native El Salvador because it was more likely than not that gang members there would persecute him.
Abrego García’s removal has drawn rebuke from multiple federal judges, lawyers, and members of Congress who say his administration is disregarding court orders, constitutional rights, and federal laws intended to safeguard immigrants from persecution. U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) visited Abrego García in April and disclosed that he had been transferred to a different prison.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said at a Senate hearing in early May that “there is no scenario where Abrego García will be in the United States again.”
The indictment, which was returned under seal by a federal grand jury in Tennessee last month, charges Abrego Garcia with counts of conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens. Both crimes are punishable by up to 10 years in prison, should he be convicted.
Abrego García, 29, came to the United States as a teenager, and said he had been fleeing threats from the Barrio 18 gang that had tried to extort money from his mother’s pupusa shop. He and his wife are raising three children, including the couple’s autistic son.
It is unclear what impact, if any, that Abrego García’s return to the United States would have on his civil immigration case. Homeland Security officials have alleged that he is no longer eligible for withholding of removal, and Noem said at the Senate hearing on May 8 that if he were to return, “we would immediately deport him again.”
But his lawyers said in court records that federal regulations require DHS to ask an immigration judge to reopen the case in order for his protection against removal from the United States to be canceled.
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