Man deported to El Salvador under Trump returns to US to face people-smuggling charges amid legal row
by Frankie Elliott · LBCBy Frankie Elliott
A man has been returned to the US to face criminal charges after being mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration.
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, has been charged with conspiring to transport illegal immigrants into the US.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters on Friday that the indictment was filed in a federal court in Tennessee on May 21 — more than two months after the wanted man was deported from Maryland under a controversial 18th-century wartime law.
Abrego Garcia's lawyer, Andrew Rossman, said it would now be up to the US judicial system to ensure he received due process.
"Today's action proves what we've known all along—that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so," he said.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, was expelled from the US despite being granted protection by an immigration judge, who found he was likely to be persecuted by local gangs if returned to his home country.
According to the indictment, Abrego Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants into the US illegally and transport them from the border to other destinations across the country.
Ms Bondi outlined the charges at a news conference, saying: "The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring.
"He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found—smuggling people throughout our country... MS-13 members, violent gang terrorist organisation members... throughout our country.
"He will be prosecuted in our country, sentenced in our country if convicted, and then returned after completion of his sentence."
After American officials presented Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele with an arrest warrant for Abrego Garcia, he agreed to return him.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told Abrego Garcia that his constitutional rights to due process were being ignored when he travelled to El Salvador to meet him in April.
Critics point to the deportation of Abrego Garcia as an example of the failures of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies.
US District Judge Paula Xinis has opened a probe into what the Trump administration did — or failed to do — to secure his return, after officials were accused of stonewalling his lawyer's requests for information.
In response, officials alleged that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang — claims his lawyers have strongly denied.
In a separate statement, Pam Bondi also criticised what she called the "Fake News Media", as she repeated the yet-unproven allegations against Abrego Garcia.
"The Justice Department’s grand jury indictment against Abrego Garcia proves the unhinged Democrat Party was wrong, and their stenographers in the Fake News Media were once again played like fools.
"Abrego Garcia was never an innocent 'Maryland man'—Abrego Garcia is an illegal alien terrorist, gang member, and human trafficker who has spent his entire life abusing innocent people, especially women and the most vulnerable."