A man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia faces charges related to what US President Donald Trump’s government said was a large human smuggling operation that brought immigrants into the country illegally.
His abrupt release from El Salvador is the latest twist in a saga that sparked a months-long standoff between Trump administration officials and the courts over a deportation that officials initially acknowledged was done in error but then continued to stand behind in apparent defiance of orders by judges to facilitate his return to the US.
The development occurred after US officials presented El Salvador President Nayib Bukele with an arrest warrant for federal charges in Tennessee accusing Abrego Garcia of playing a key role in smuggling immigrants into the country for money. He is expected to be prosecuted in the US and, if convicted, will be returned to his home country of El Salvador at the conclusion of the case, officials said.
“This is what American justice looks like,” US attorney general Pam Bondi said in announcing Abrego Garcia’s return and the unsealing of a grand jury indictment.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers called the case “baseless”.
“There’s no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,” lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
Federal magistrate judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville, Tennessee, determined that Abrego Garcia will be held in custody until at least next Friday, when there will be an arraignment and detention hearing.
Abrego Garcia appeared in court wearing a short-sleeved, white, buttoned shirt. When asked if he understood the charges, he told the judge through an interpreter: “Yes. I understand.”
Democrats and immigrant rights groups had pressed for Abrego Garcia’s release, with several politicians – including senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, where Abrego Garcia had lived for years – even travelling to El Salvador to visit him. A federal judge had ordered him to be returned in April and the US Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal by directing the government to work to bring him back.
But the news that Abrego Garcia, who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs, was being brought back for the purpose of prosecution was greeted with dismay by his lawyers.
The case also prompted the resignation of a top supervisor in the US attorney’s office in Nashville, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.
Ben Schrader, who was chief of the office’s criminal division, did not explain the reason for his resignation but posted to social media around the time the indictment was being handed down, saying: “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.”
He declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press on Friday.
