WASHINGTON: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, was flown back to the United States to face criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants within the country, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday (Jun 6).
Abrego Garcia’s return marks a turning point in a case that became a flashpoint for critics of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies, who pointed to it as a sign that the administration was disregarding civil liberties in its push to step up deportations.
The 29-year-old Salvadoran, whose wife and young child in Maryland are US citizens, appeared in federal court in Nashville on Friday evening.
His arraignment was set for Jun 13, when he will enter a plea, according to local media reports. Until then, he will remain in federal custody.
If he is convicted, he would be deported to El Salvador after serving his sentence, Bondi said.
The Trump administration has said Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, an accusation that his lawyers deny.
Officials on Friday portrayed the indictment of Abrego Garcia by a grand jury in Tennessee as vindication of their approach to immigration enforcement.
“The man has a horrible past and I could see a decision being made, bring him back, show everybody how horrible this guy is,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that it was the US Justice Department that decided to bring Abrego Garcia back.
According to the indictment, Abrego Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators as part of a smuggling ring to bring immigrants to the US illegally, and then transport them from the US-Mexico border to other destinations in the country.
Abrego Garcia often picked up migrants in Houston, and made more than 100 trips between Texas and Maryland between 2016 and 2025, the indictment said. The indictment also alleges Abrego Garcia transported firearms and drugs.
According to the indictment, one of Abrego Garcia’s co-conspirators belonging to the same ring was involved in the transportation of migrants whose tractor trailer overturned in Mexico in 2021, resulting in 50 deaths.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, called the criminal charges “fantastical” and a “kitchen sink” of allegations.
“This is all based on the statements of individuals who are currently either facing prosecution or in federal prison,” he said. “I want to know what they offered those people.”
Abrego Garcia was deported on Mar 15, more than two months before the charges were filed. He was briefly held in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order barring him from being sent to El Salvador because he would likely be persecuted by gangs.
At a press conference, Bondi said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele had agreed to return Abrego Garcia after US officials presented his government with an arrest warrant.
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi said at a press conference.
In a court filing on Friday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to have Abrego Garcia detained pending trial. They said Abrego Garcia got into MS-13 in El Salvador by murdering a rival gang member’s mother, citing a co-conspirator whom they did not name.
The indictment did not charge Abrego Garcia with murder. If convicted, Abrego Garcia could face 10 years in prison for each migrant he transported, prosecutors said.
That means he could be locked away for the rest of his life, they said.
