Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, is back in the United States to face human smuggling charges.
A federal grand jury in Tennessee indicted Abrego Garcia on two counts of “alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling” on May 21, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a Friday afternoon news conference.
Bondi said the grand jury found Abrego Garcia played a “significant role” in a human smuggling ring for nine years.
“He was a smuggler of humans and children and women,” Bondi claimed.
“The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order. Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him,” Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement to News4.
“This shows that they were playing games with the court all along. Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished, not after. This is an abuse of power, not justice. The government should put him on trial, yes-but in front of the same immigration judge who heard his case in 2019, which is the ordinary manner of doing things, ‘to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,’ as the Supreme Court ordered.”
The indictment also states Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, an accusation his lawyer and wife have denied.
“This is what American justice looks like,” Bondi said after thanking Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for agreeing to return Abrego Garcia.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration admitted it mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia due to what it called an “administrative error.”
But border czar Tom Homan said in a White House press conference on April 28 he doesn’t accept the term “mistake,” saying “there was an oversight, there was a withholding order,” and claiming that the facts around the withholding order had changed, labelling Abrego Garcia “now a terrorist.”
In April, the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. from El Salvador.
Stay with News4 as we continue to update this developing story.
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