By Sarah N. Lynch and Luc Cohen, Reuters
Picture obtained from the X account of Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele, @nayibbukele, showing US Senator Chris Van Hollen (R) holding a meeting with Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a US resident wrongfully deported to his home country, at a hotel in San Salvador on 17 April 2025. Van Hollen met with Salvadoran Abrego Garcia, whose wrongful deportation has triggered a political firestorm over President Donald Trump's hard-line immigration policies. Photo: AFP / Supplied
- Abrego Garcia charged with conspiracy to transport illegal immigrants
- Lawyer Rossman criticises administration's refusal to bring Abrego Garcia back
- Supreme Court had ordered Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, has returned to the United States to face criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants within the US, Attorney General Pam Bondi says.
Abrego Garcia's case has become a flash point for escalating tensions between the executive branch and the judiciary, which has blocked a number of Trump's signature policies.
The US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return, with liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the government had cited no basis for what she called his "warrantless arrest."
Bondi said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to return Abrego Garcia to the US after US officials presented his government with an arrest warrant. The indictment was filed in federal court in Tennessee on 21 May, more than two months after Abrego Garcia's deportation.
"The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring," Bondi said in a press conference.
In a statement, 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," said Rossman, a partner at law firm Quinn Emanuel.
Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador, despite an immigration judge's 2019 order granting him protection from deportation to El Salvador after finding he was likely to be persecuted by gangs if returned there, court records show.
Critics of President Donald Trump pointed to the erroneous deportation as an example of the excesses of the Republican president's aggressive approach to stepping up deportations.
US District Judge Paula Xinis has opened a probe into what, if anything, the Trump administration had done to secure his return, after his lawyers accused officials of stonewalling their requests for information.
Officials countered by alleging that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. His lawyers have denied that Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang and said he had not been charged with or convicted of any crime.
The indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the United States illegally, and then transport them from the border to other destinations in the country. Abrego Garcia often picked up migrants in Houston, the indictment said.
The indictment also charges Abrego Garcia and two unidentified co-conspirators with transporting firearms illegally purchased in Texas for resale in Maryland. Abrego Garcia also transported illegal narcotics purchased in Texas for resale in Maryland and was on some occasions accompanied on those trips by members and associates of MS-13, according to the indictment.
- Reuters
