WASHINGTON (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador became a political flashpoint in the Trump administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement, was being returned to the United States to face criminal charges related to what the Trump administration said was a massive human smuggling operation that brought immigrants into the country illegally.
He is expected to be prosecuted in the U.S. and, if convicted, will be returned to his home country in El Salvador at the conclusion of the case, officials said Friday.
“This is what American justice looks like,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday in announcing the return of Abrego Garcia and the criminal charges.
The charges stem from a 2022 vehicle stop in which the Tennessee Highway Patrol suspected him of human trafficking. A report released by the Department of Homeland Security in April states that none of the people in the vehicle had luggage, while they listed the same address as Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime, while the officers allowed him to drive on with only a warning about an expired driver’s license, according to the DHS report. The report said he was traveling from Texas to Maryland, via Missouri, to bring in people to perform construction work.
In response to the report’s release in April, Abrego Garcia’s wife said in a statement that he sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites, “so it’s entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with others in the vehicle. He was not charged with any crime or cited for any wrongdoing.”
The Trump administration has been publicizing Abrego Garcia’s interactions with police over the years, despite a lack of corresponding criminal charges, while it faces a federal court order and calls from some in Congress to return him to the U.S.
Authorities in Tennessee released video of a 2022 traffic stop last month. The body-camera footage shows a calm and friendly exchange between officers with the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
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Officers then discussed among themselves their suspicions of human trafficking because nine people were traveling without luggage. One of the officers said, “He’s hauling these people for money.” Another said he had $1,400 in an envelope.
An attorney for Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a statement after the footage’s release in May that he saw no evidence of a crime in the released footage.
“But the point is not the traffic stop — it’s that Mr. Abrego Garcia deserves his day in court,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
The move comes days after the Trump administration complied with a court order to return a Guatemalan ma n deported to Mexico despite his fears of being harmed there. The man, identified in court papers as O.C.G, was the first person known to have been returned to U.S. custody after deportation since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
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