Wrongfully deported Maryland man returned to the US, charged with smuggling

WASHINGTON (CN) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongfully deported to an El Salvadoran prison, was returned to the U.S. on Friday to face human smuggling charges, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Abrego Garcia emerged as the most well-known person sent to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, in March after the Trump administration said it made a mistake in deporting him to the infamous prison.

But now, Abrego Garcia will face fresh charges in the U.S. related to “alien smuggling,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday.

In a statement to reporters, Bondi thanked El Salvador President Nayib Bukele for agreeing to return the Maryland man to the U.S., saying that Washington had presented Bukele with an arrest warrant for Abrego Garcia and that he had allowed the man to be moved back to the U.S. to face what the attorney general called “very serious charges.”

Bondi said that a grand jury had found that Abrego Garcia had played a “significant role” in a smuggling ring for the last nine years, adding that he had made more than 100 trips trafficking “children and women” throughout the country.

Bondi also said that a “co-conspirator” of Abrego Garcia had accused him of soliciting nude photographs and videos from a minor.

In the indictment, unsealed in the Middle District of Tennessee, the grand jury said that Abrego Garcia conspired to bring migrants into the U.S. from countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and Ecuador. The charges also formally affiliated him with the gang MS-13, and they said that Abrego Garcia used his gang status to “further his criminal activity.”

”These facts demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is a danger to our community,” said the attorney general.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained and deported Abrego Garcia without notice or a chance for appeal last month. The Trump administration claims he is a member of the MS-13 gang. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers say this is untrue, and the government hasn’t provided evidence for its charges.

Fearing gang violence, Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador as a teenager. He has been in the U.S. for almost 14 years, living in Maryland with his wife and three children. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys say he had legal authorization to work in the country.

A 2019 ruling from an immigration judge prohibited sending him back to El Salvador, but ICE put him on a plane to his home country in what officials later called an administrative error.

Abrego Garcia and other migrants have been imprisoned in CECOT, the mega-prison where President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has detained thousands of gang members who terrorized the country. The prison is known for its abusive conditions.

Both Trump and Bukele have said they cannot bring Abrego Garcia back.

The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, but U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said she hasn’t seen anything to indicate that the Justice Department was following that command.

“To date, what the record shows is nothing has been done,” Xinis said in a status hearing.

The Trump administration says it only needed to remove domestic barriers to entry to comply. The government appealed Xinis’ definition of facilitate, but instead received a tongue-lashing from the appeals panel.

In a sharply worded opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote that the government wants 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.”

Wilkinson was joined on the panel by U.S. Circuit Judge Robert King, a Bill Clinton appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanie Thacker, a Barack Obama appointee.

Like Xinis, the appeals court reprimanded the administration over its limited definition of “facilitate,” stating that the Supreme Court’s decision does not allow the government to do nothing. Wilkinson said that facilitation doesn’t permit the erroneous deportation of people to prison in a foreign country by disregarding a court order or the violation of habeas corpus through the transfer of custody to foreign detention.

Xinis ordered an intense two-week discovery period to determine whether the Justice Department was complying with the Supreme Court’s order.

But speaking with reporters Friday, Bondi argued that there was a “big difference” between questions surrounding the government’s compliance with the Supreme Court before this newest indictment and after the charges were announced.

”The reason why he’s back and was returned is because there was an arrest warrant which was presented to the government in El Salvador,” said the attorney general. She added that she “would think” that the smuggling charges against Abrego Garcia would moot the Maryland case but suggested that it was too early to tell.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to push for Abrego Garcia’s return, securing a surprise meeting with the man, who said he had been moved from CECOT to another prison in El Salvador.

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