Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father the Trump administration sent to an infamous megaprison in El Salvador despite a judge’s order barring his deportation to that country, has returned to the United States.
Abrego Garcia, who is from El Salvador, will face a two-count indictment accusing him of transporting unauthorized migrants within the United States. ABC News first reported the indictment, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation, and CNN subsequently confirmed the report.
At a press conference Friday announcing the indictment, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Abrego Garcia “has landed” in the United States.
“We want to thank [Salvadoran] President [Nayib] Bukele for agreeing to return Abrego Garcia to the United States,” she said. “Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant, and they agreed to return him to our country.”
The indictment, which was entered under seal in May, stemmed in part from a 2022 traffic stop in which a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper pulled over Abrego Garcia. The traffic stop was the subject of previous media reporting. According to the indictment, there were nine additional passengers in Abrego Garcia’s Chevrolet Suburban.
The indictment accuses Abrego Garcia of falsely claiming he was traveling from St. Louis to Maryland when, in fact, his passengers had allegedly been picked up in Texas. The indictment claims a license plate reader found that the Suburban Abrego Garcia was driving had not been near St. Louis in the past 12 months, but “had been in the Houston, Texas area within the week leading up to the traffic stop on November 30, 2022.”
Abrego Garcia is charged with one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and another count of unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.
The indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia collected payments from undocumented people “for illegal transportation into and through the United States” and accuses him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, a claim that immigration authorities and the White House have previously made with scant evidence.
The indictment also accuses Abrego Garcia and other unnamed coconspirators of “occasionally and simultaneously transport[ing] firearms illegally purchased in Texas for distribution and resale in Maryland,” as well as narcotics — but it does not include any criminal charges alleging as much.
There is reason to be skeptical of the indictment, which appears to rely on at least one incarcerated informant — who may be unreliable because of his vulnerable status and incentive to tell authorities what they want to hear. The document also makes vague, unsubstantiated claims about wrongdoing without accompanying criminal charges and comes at a time when the Trump administration is under mounting pressure from the courts to return Abrego Garcia — a man Bondi had previously declared was “not coming back to our country.”
ABC News, citing unnamed sources, reported that concerns over Abrego Garcia’s indictment led to the abrupt resignation of Ben Schrader, chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee — the district in which Abrego Garcia faces charges. Schrader announced his resignation on LinkedIn two weeks ago, though he did not offer any reason for his departure.
In a statement to HuffPost, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the indictment against Abrego Garcia showed that he “was never an innocent ‘Maryland Man’” but rather “an illegal alien terrorist, gang member, and human trafficker who has spent his entire life abusing innocent people, especially women and the most vulnerable.”
“Abrego Garcia will now return to the United States to answer for his crimes and meet the full force of American justice,” Leavitt added. “The Democrat lawmakers, namely Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen, and every single so-called ‘journalist’ who defended this illegal criminal abuser must immediately apologize to Garcia’s victims.”
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval Moshenberg, said the indictment showed the Trump administration had been “playing games” with judges when it claimed it could not bring his client back to the United States.
“Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him. This shows that they were playing games with the court all along,” Moshenberg told NPR. “Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished, not after. This is an abuse of power, not justice.”
Hundreds of migrants in the U.S. have been disappeared by the government to El Salvador’s infamous megaprison, el Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, where Abrego Garcia was initially detained.
His family sent him to the U.S. as a teenager, around 2011, after gang members demanded money and threatened to kill him if he didn’t join the gang. He entered the U.S. without inspection and reunited with his brother in Maryland. He eventually married a U.S. citizen with two children from a previous relationship, and the couple had a third child together. All of the children have special needs.
Abrego Garcia was detained by ICE in March 2019 during the first Trump administration while looking for construction work at a Home Depot parking lot. ICE initiated removal proceedings and accused him, with little evidence, of being a member of the MS-13 gang.
His wife was “shocked” by the allegation, she wrote in a declaration earlier this year. “Kilmar is not and has never been a gang member. I’m certain of that.”
Abrego Garcia was denied release on bond, but in 2019, he was granted “withholding of removal” to El Salvador based on his “well-founded” fear of violence from the gang back home. He was released and became a union member, working full-time as a sheet metal apprentice while pursuing his license at the University of Maryland, according to a complaint his lawyers filed after the government rendered him to CECOT. He complied with his yearly check-ins with ICE and had never been charged or convicted of any crimes in the U.S. or elsewhere, according to the complaint.
Two weeks after Abrego Garcia was sent to CECOT, government lawyers admitted he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador based on an “administrative error.” On April 4, a federal judge ordered the government to “facilitate and effectuate” his return by April 7 — which the Trump administration refused to do, despite the Supreme Court affirming the federal judge’s ruling in a 9-0 decision.
In court, government lawyers argued they could not force the Salvadoran government to release Abrego Garcia, despite paying the Salvadoran government to detain him and other migrants.
“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” a federal appeals court wrote of the government’s position. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.”
President Donald Trump seemingly undermined administration lawyers’ claim, stating in public that he “could” call the Salvadoran president and push for Abrego Garcia’s return.
The government’s admission of error and brazen defiance of court orders in Abrego Garcia’s case made him one of the most recognizable CECOT detainees. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) met with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador in April, marking the first — and only — such contact with a Trump administration CECOT detainee. The senator said afterward that Abrego Garcia had said he’d been moved from CECOT to another facility a few days prior to their meeting.
“For months the Trump Administration flouted the Supreme Court and our Constitution,” Van Hollen said in a statement Friday. “Today, they appear to have finally relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and with the due process rights afforded to everyone in the United States. As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights – and the rights of all. The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia should not have been deported,” Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) added in a statement of her own. “Even the Supreme Court demanded this President follow the law and return him to the U.S. It is right that due process will be afforded to him.”