Deportly Deported Salvadoran Native Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been reduced to the United States where he will be confronted with criminal prosecution for alleged transport of migrants without papers within the US
More than two months after the Trump government admitted that the Abrego Garcia wrongly deported from Maryland to his native El Salvador, a federal large jury has sued him for alleged transport of migrants without papers within the United States.
A complaint against two counts, which was submitted under Seal last month at the federal court in Tennessee and denied Friday, claims that Abrego Garcia, 29, participated in a conspiracy of years to drag migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.
More: Justice Department is investigating 2022 Abrego Garcia Traffic stop: Sources
The alleged conspiracy included almost a decade and concerned the domestic transport of thousands of non -citizens from Mexico and Central America, including some children, in exchange for thousands of dollars, according to the indictment.
According to the indictment, ABREGO-GARICA would have participated in more than 100 such journeys. Among those who are reportedly transported, were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, sources that are familiar with the investigation.
AbreGo-Garcia is the only member of the alleged conspiracy that is charged in the indictment.
His return to the US comes after the Trump government repeatedly said they could not return him despite his wrong deportation.
Murray Osorio PLLC via AP – Photo: undated photo supplied by Murray Osorio PLLC shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, at a press conference on Friday afternoon, thanked Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for “agreed to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States.”
“Our government presented El Salvador an arrest warrant and they agreed to bring him back to our country,” said Bondi.
Bondi said that if Abrego Garcia is convicted of the charges, he will be returned to his home country El Salvador after completion of his sentence.
“The big jury discovered that in the past nine years Abrego Garcia has played an important role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi said. “They discovered that this was his full -time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of people and children and women. He made more than 100 trips, found the big jury, who smuggled people throughout our country.”
In a statement to ABC News, Abrego Garcia's lawyer said that he continues to fight to ensure that Abrego Garcia receives a fair trial.
“From the beginning this case made one thing painfully clear: the government had the power to bring him back at any time. Instead, they chose to play games with the court and with the life of a man,” said lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg. “We are not only fighting for Kilmar – we fight to ensure that the correct procedural rights are protected for everyone. Because tomorrow can be one of us – if we don't have the power checked if we ignore our constitution.”
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP -Photo: Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks as a deputy attorney -general -General Todd Blanche listens during a press conference on Kilmar Abrego Garcia at the Ministry of Justice, June 6, 2025, in Washington.
In a detention memo that was submitted on Friday afternoon in the court in Tennessee, federal prosecutors have moved to keep Abrego Garcia in pre -trial detention “because he is a danger to the community and a serious escape risk, and no prerequisite or combination of conditions.”
Federal Public Prosecutors, in a detention memo submitted this afternoon in the court in Tennessee, have moved before the ABREGO Garcia before the trial and written that “… The United States will ask that the suspect is being held in custody in custody because he is a danger of the conditions of the conditions and no position of flight, and the risks of flight, and a seal of flight, and the risks of flight, and the risks of flight, and the risks of flight, and the risks of flight, and the risks of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of flight, and the conditions of the risks, and no. his appearance in court. “
“If convicted during the trial, the defendant stands for a maximum punishment of 10 years of” prison for “every alien being” he transported, “said the memo,” according to the exposure of the conviction for the suspect – given the number of aliens involved without papers – goes much further than the rest of the suspect's life. “
ABREGO Garcia, a resident of Salvadoran who had lived in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March to the Cecot Mega prison of El Salvador-Eonds, a judicial order of 2019 who holding his deportation in that country for fear of prosecution of the Crimel Bende MS-Greginging. His wife and lawyers deny that he is an MS-13 member.
The relocation of the Ministry of Justice to criminalize Abego Garcia, the most aggressive step still represents in the efforts of the administration to collect potentially burdening information about the background of Abrego Garcia, after the command of a federal court obliging the government to facilitate an appropriate trial to be used to the PRECCCCCOM.
The Trump government stated in the court that the removal of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was wrong in March, because it was violating an American immigration court order in 2019 that Abrego Garcia protected against his native country, according to the Immigration Court registers. An immigration judge had established that Abrego Garcia would probably be prosecuted there by local gangs who reportedly terrorized him and his family.
However, the administration argued that Abrego Garcia should not be returned to the US because he is a member of the Transnational Salvadoran gang MS-13, a claim that his family and lawyers have denied. In recent weeks, Trump administration has published the interactions of Abrego Garcia with the police over the years, despite a lack of corresponding criminal prosecution.
In March, the ABREGO Garcia family brought a lawsuit on his deportation. Judge Paula Xinis in the US in Maryland eventually ordered the Trump government to facilitate its return to the US, the American Supreme Court confirmed that ruling on 10 April.
Abrego Garcia was initially sent to the notorious Cecot prison of El Salvador, but was supposed to have been transferred to another facility in the country.
The criminal investigation that led to the indictment was started in April, because the federal authorities started investigating the circumstances of a traffic stop from 2022 of Abrego Garcia by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, according to the sources. Abrego Garcia was persuaded for too quickly in a vehicle with eight passengers and told the police that they had worked on construction in Missouri.
According to Bodycameraten van de Verkeersstop 2022, the Tennessee troopers – after interviewing Abrego Garcia – discussed their suspicions that Abrego Garcia may be transporting people for money because nine people without luggage travel, but Abrego Garcia was not charged or charged.
More: Timeline: Unlawful deportation from Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador
The officers finally allowed Abrego Garcia to continue driving with just a warning about an expired driver's license, according to a report on the stop released last month by the US Department of Interior Security.
Asked what circumstances have changed since Abrego Garcia had not been taken into custody during that traffic stop in Tennessee, Bondi replied: “What has changed is that Donald Trump is now president of the United States, and our boundaries are again safe, and thanks to the fierce light that is stuck on Abrego Garcia – this investigation and we have been put with an actual ring of actual ring and this ring has been done with an actual ring of actual ring and this is an actual ring of actual ring and an actual ring of an actual ring and an actual ring of an actual ring of an actual ring and we had an actual ring of ringing Continuous ring. “
Asked by ABC News' Pierre Thomas asked if this should be seen as the solving of the individual civil case in Maryland, in which a federal judge ordered the government to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, said deputy pledge -general -general -general -general was said to be a big difference. So there is a big difference for the question whether it makes the constant lawsuit in Maryland.
As ABC News reported for the first time last month, the Ministry of Justice had quietly investigated the Tsenee traffic stop. As part of the probe, federal agents visited a federal prison in Talladega at the end of April, Alabama to interrogate Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, a convicted criminal who was the registered owner of the Abrego Garcia vehicle when he stopped at Interstate East of Nashville. Hernandez-Reyes was not present at the traffic stop.
Hernandez-Reyes, 38, is currently a imprisonment of 30 months for the illegal returning of the US after an earlier crime conviction for illegal transport of Aliens.
After having given a limited immunity, Hernandez-Reyes would have told the researchers that he had previously operated a “taxi service” in Baltimore. He claimed to have met Abrego Garcia around 2015 and claimed to have hired him several times to transport migrants from Texas to different locations in the United States, sources told ABC News.
More: Newly released video shows Abrego Garcia's 2022 Tennessee Traffic Stop
When details of the Tennessee traffic stop were first published, the wife of Abrego Garcia said that her husband sometimes transported groups of colleague construction workers between work locations.
“Unfortunately Kilmar is currently locked up without contact with the outside world, which means that he cannot respond to the claims,” said Jennifer Vasquez Sura in mid -April.
Senator Chris van Hollen van Maryland, who flew to El Salvador and met shortly after his deportation in Abrego Garcia, said on Friday that the government had “assigned” Trump about his return.
“After months of ignoring our Constitution, it seems that the Trump manager has admitted to our requirements for compliance with judicial orders and a decent process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” posted from running on X. “This has never been about the man – it is about his constitutional rights and the rights of all.”
According to the court reports, Abrego Garcia illegally entered the US as a teenager in 2012. He lived in Maryland for the past 13 years and married Vasquez Sura, an American citizen in 2019. The couple has one child together.
ABC News' Laura Romero has contributed to this report.
