Kilmar Abrego Garcia returns to the US and faces federal accusations
A Maryland man who was mistakenly deported has been accused of making more than 100 trips to move illegal immigrants across the country.
- Salvador immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been charged in Tennessee with alleged involvement in an immigration smuggling ring.
- The fees are attributed to a traffic stop in 2022, when Abrego Garcia transported nine Hispanic men without identification or luggage.
- Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March, but returned to the US in June to face charges.
NASHVILLE — The Chevrolet suburbs were heading east along Interstate 40 when they caught the attention of Tennessee troopers.
Behind the wheel was Kilmer Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who illegally arrived in the United States 10 years ago from El Salvador. Among the vehicles were nine other passengers, all Hispanic men, according to court documents.
Abrego Garcia told officers he was bringing the man back from St. Louis to Maryland, where he said they were working at a construction site.
However, the police were suspicious.
None of the passengers had IDs or baggage, no signs of tools or construction equipment, and several men handed them the same Maryland address where they were heading. A few minutes later, police allowed the SUV to continue their journey and issued only warning quotes to Abrego Garcia to drive with an expired license.
More than two years later, traffic stopped on November 30, 2022 in Cookville, a city 80 miles east of Nashville, and is at the heart of federal criminal cases, including allegations of international migrant smuggling rings and criticism of President Donald Trump’s forced policy of illegally deporting immigrants in the United States.
The Federal Ju Court in Nashville charged Abrego Garcia on May 21 with accusations that he was part of a conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants for economic benefits. He appears in the U.S. District Court in Nashville on June 13th to respond to the charges. If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison for each person transported. Prosecutors say he has traveled more than 100 times.
The charges are the latest chapters in the Saga against three sheet metal workers and three fathers who were deported to El Salvador in March in violation of a previous court that barred the Trump administration from sending him back to his home country.
Government lawyers who confirmed in court records that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported have been argued for weeks that the United States has no authority to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States from the Salvador prison where he was held. They suddenly turned the course back, and on June 6th he flew him to the US.
The lawyers at the U.S. Lawyers in Nashville, who are indicting the case, alleges that Abrego Garcia remains in jail while the case is alleged. Abrego Garcia’s criminal lawyers argue that the criminal lawyers at the Federal Public Defence Office in Nashville does not provide sufficient evidence to justify his detention.
“Abrego Garcia asks the court that he has been denied in the past few months – justifiable proceedings,” his lawyer wrote in a June 11 filing.
US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes will consider the question during the June 13 hearing.
Meanwhile, other questions continue to swirl around the case, with concerns that politics could have influenced the decision to file criminal charges.
Why did the government wait more than two years to accuse Abrego Garcia when there was evidence that he was involved in international smuggling rings? Why did the Trump administration only file charges after facing a flood of criticism for deporting Abrego Garcia in violation of previous court orders? And why was Abrego Garcia alive when he was handed over to an immigration agent in March and then deported to El Salvador, even though the case was indicted in Tennessee, not in Maryland?
The Trump administration, which accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the violent gangster MS-13, pointed to an incident that justified his decision to banish him from the United States. The administration also accused former President Joe Biden of delay in pursuing criminal charges, claiming that Biden is not interested in taking action against immigrants who were illegally in the United States.
Attorney General Pam Bondy asked at a recent press conference in Washington, D.C. about what has changed since the 2022 traffic stop.
Abrego Garcia’s immigration lawyers have raised questions about the government’s motivation to file criminal charges.
“The government has vanished Kilmer to a foreign prison in violation of court orders,” said Simon Sandoval Moshenberg, who represented Abrego Garcia in a civil lawsuit that challenged his democratization. “Now, after months of delays and secrets, they will get him back and prosecute him rather than correct their mistakes.”
“This is an abuse of power, not just justice,” he said.
The criminal case also reportedly led to the famous resignation at the U.S. Law Office in Tennessee.
The day Abrego Garcia was indicted, Ben Schroeder, chief of the Criminal Division of the Central District of Tennessee, resigned. Schrader, a 15-year veteran of the US law firm, has become increasingly uncomfortable with the administration’s actions, and the charges were “the last straw.”
Schrader declined to request comment.
Why were criminal charges filed in Tennessee?
In a criminal case against Abrego Garcia, the prosecutor should point out “obvious conduct” that indicates that the defendant took part in the conspiracy.
“They claim a comprehensive conspiracy, and then they choose one obvious act of the conspiracy to grant jurisdiction to the court,” said David Rayvin, a longtime defense attorney for Nashville.
In this case, the Abrego Garcia stop with the Tennessee Highway Patrol in 2022 is its “outright act.”
The indictment against Abrego Garcia alleges that between 2016 and 2025, he and other unknown people took undocumented US immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and other countries, before passing through Mexico and crossing Texas. Sometimes, MS-13 members accompanied him on a trip, and the indictment stated.
Prosecutors say Abrego Garcia’s role in the plot was to usually transport people after they were in the US and usually pick them up in the Houston area.
When he was pulled to Tennessee, Abrego Garcia told police that his passengers were working at a construction site in St. Louis. However, the accusations say data from license plate readers show that the vehicle has not been in St. Louis for the past year but was in Houston last week.
Rayvin predicted that Abrego Garcia’s lawyers would ask for the case to be dismissed as time has passed since the alleged crime occurred.
“What you’re expecting is, “I think the case should be dismissed for reasons of a legitimate process. You’ve seriously biased my right to protect my client. Many of the evidence is 4-5 years old, so there are no witnesses,” Rayvin said.
“In other words, the question is where have you been for six years,” he said.
It is not clear how much evidence the government has now with Abrego Garcia.
“By definition, it is only necessary to state the charges and one de facto predicate act, so we cannot identify the quality or amount of evidence that the government has from the charges,” Rayvin said.
Prosecutors say they know who some of the co-conspirators in the case are, despite them being unknown in the charges. Raybin said prosecutors generally want to have more evidence than their conspirators’ testimony.
“The practical question is that you’d want to have something beyond the snitches of many prisons where you are at risk of deportation,” Rayvin said. “That’s a big problem with this incident for me.”
And while the case has been politicized by media and government officials, Raybin didn’t think it would be a wise strategy in court.
“I think defense will probably start to raise the illusion that this is a political incident or a political witch hunt,” he said. “As a lawyer, I would never do that unless I have four aces.”
He compared it to another recently famous case in the Central Tennessee area.
“You know, the only thing that goes to the political witch hunt cry so far,” he said. It cited a political corruption case against Glen Casada, a former Tennessee House Speaker, who was recently convicted of a federal crime. “In the case of Casada, it didn’t go anywhere.”
Michael Collins is a national correspondent for USA Today. Follow him on X @mcollinsNews.
Evan Means is a Tennessee Justice reporter. Contact him with questions, tips and story ideas at emalins@tennessean.com.