Abrego García jailed in Tennessee awaiting trial on human trafficking charges

By Devlin Barrett, Alan Feuer, Glenn Thrush and James C. McKinley Jr.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man at the center of a political maelstrom after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, was in a Tennessee jail Saturday after the United States abruptly brought him back to face new charges of transporting migrants living in the U.S. illegally.

Abrego Garcia made an initial appearance in federal court in Nashville, Tennessee, late Friday, and the government asked a judge to keep him in custody without bail. He was detained in the Putnam County jail in Cookeville, Tennessee, about 80 miles east of Nashville, his lawyers said. He is expected to return to federal court for an arraignment Friday.

The sudden move by the Trump administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States after months of fighting efforts to do so could end the most high-profile legal battle over the president’s authority to rapidly seize and deport immigrants lacking legal status without a hearing.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said they welcomed their day in court and that the government’s decision undercut its efforts to keep him in El Salvador.

“It’s now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees to all persons,” said Andrew Rossman, a lawyer for Abrego Garcia.

In March, Abrego Garcia, a contractor from Maryland, was picked up in a Trump administration dragnet and deported along with several other men to a prison in El Salvador, even though an immigration judge had ruled he should not be sent there because he had reason to fear for his safety.

Now Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, faces more than just the accusation that he was in the country illegally. A 10-page indictment — filed in the U.S. District Court in Nashville in May and unsealed Friday — accuses him not only of being a member of the violent street gang MS-13 but also of being part of a ring that smuggled Latin American immigrants into the United States.

In court papers seeking his pretrial detention, prosecutors said Abrego Garcia had played “a significant role” in the conspiracy to smuggle immigrants, including unaccompanied minors. They added that smuggling immigrants was Abrego Garcia’s “primary source of income” and that he had transported about “50 undocumented aliens” each month for several years.

The indictment relies on five “confidential informants” who told investigators they were also part of the ring. Two of the informants told federal authorities that Abrego Garcia regularly picked up illegal immigrants in Houston and drove them to other parts of the country, starting in 2016.

Abrego Garcia is also accused in the indictment of smuggling weapons from Texas to Maryland and of abusing some of the female immigrants, though he is not charged in connection with those acts.

The smuggling charges stem from a traffic stop on Nov. 30, 2022, when Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding by the Tennessee Highway Patrol on Interstate 40 East in Putnam County, the indictment said.

Officers determined that the Chevrolet Suburban he was driving had been altered with “an aftermarket third row of seats designed to carry additional passengers,” the indictment said. It also noted that there were “nine Hispanic males packed into the SUV” and that none “had luggage or even tools consistent with construction work.”

Abrego Garcia, who had an expired license, told officers that he and his passengers had been in St. Louis for the past two weeks doing construction work, according to the indictment. He was let off with a warning.

But a subsequent investigation, prosecutors said, revealed that Abrego Garcia’s cellphone and license plate reader data showed he had been in Texas that morning and nowhere near St. Louis for the previous weeks.