The Salvadoran native, the Salvadoran native, Kilmar Abrego García, has been returned to the United States, where he will face criminal charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the United States
More than two months after the Trump administration admitted that he deported by mistake Abrego García de Maryland to his native El Salvador, a federal grand jury accused him of supposedly transporting undocumented migrants within the United States.
An accusation of two positions, which was presented under a seal in a federal court in Tennessee last month and revealed on Friday, alleges that Abrego García, 29, participated in a conspiracy of years to transport undocumented migrants of Texas into the interior of the country.
The alleged conspiracy covered almost a decade and involved the domestic transport of thousands of non -citizens of Mexico and Central America, including some children, in exchange for thousands of dollars, according to the accusation.
It is alleged that Abrego-García participated in more than 100 of these trips, according to the accusation. Among the allegedly transported were members of the MS-13 saving gang, sources familiar with the investigation said.
Abrego-García is the only member of the alleged conspiracy accused in the accusation.
His return to the United States occurs after the Trump administration said repeatedly that they could not bring it back despite their wrong deportation.
Kilmar Abrego García is placed in the back seat of a truck for ice agents after arriving at Nashville, Tennessee, on June 6, 2025.
ABC News
The attorney general Pam Bondi, at a press conference on Friday afternoon, thanked Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for “accepting Abbrego García to the United States.”
“Our government presented El Salvador an arrest warrant and agreed to return it to our country,” Bondi said.
Bondi said that if Abrego García is convicted of the charges, at the end of his sentence, he will be deported to his country of origin of El Salvador.
“The Grand Jury discovered that in the last nine years, Abrego García has played an important role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi said. “They discovered that this was their full -time work, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans, children and women. He made more than 100 trips, he found the grand jury, smuggling people throughout our country.”
The decision to pursue the accusation against Abrego García led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high -ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, said the sources about Schrader’s decision to ABC News. Schrader’s resignation was caused by the concerns that the case was following for political reasons, the sources said.
Schrader, who spent 15 years at the United States prosecutor’s office in Nashville and was the head of the criminal division, declined to comment when he was contacted by ABC News.
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks as the attached attorney Todd Blanche listens during a press conference on Kilmar Abrego García in the Department of Justice, on June 6, 2025, in Washington.
Julia DeMaree Nikhinson/AP
In a statement to ABC News, Abrego García’s lawyer said he will continue to fight to ensure that Abrego García receives a fair trial.
“From the beginning, this case has left a painfully clear thing: the government had the power to bring it back at any time. Instead, they chose to play with the court and with the life of a man,” said lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg. “We are not only fighting for Kilmar, we are struggling to ensure that the rights of due process are protected for everyone. Because tomorrow could be any of us, if we let the power not control, if we ignore our Constitution.”
In a detention memorandum presented on Friday afternoon in the Court in Tennessee, federal prosecutors moved so that Abrego García maintained in prior custody of the trial “because it represents a danger to the community and a serious risk of flight, and no condition or combination of conditions would guarantee the security of the community or its appearance in the court.”
Federal prosecutors, in a detention memorandum presented this afternoon in the Court in Tennessee, have transferred the preventive detention of Abrego García, writing that “… United States will request that the accused be maintained in custody prior to the trial because it represents a danger to the community and a serious risk of flight, and no condition or combination of conditions would guarantee the security of the community or its appearance in the court.”
“If he is convicted in the trial, the defendant faces a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison for ‘each foreigner’ who transported,” said the memorandum, “consequently, the statement of sentence for the accused, given the number of undocumented foreigners involved, goes far beyond the rest of the defendant’s life.”
Abrego García, a Salvadoran native who had been living with his wife and children in Maryland, was deported in March to the mega prison of Cecot of El Salvador, despite a 2019 court order that prohibits deportation to that country due to fear of persecution, after the Trump administration said he was a member of the MS-13 gang of criminal. His wife and lawyers deny that he is a member of MS-13.
The movement of the Department of Justice to criminally process Abrego García represents the most aggressive step, but in the efforts of the administration to gather potentially incriminating information about the background of Abrego García, after the order of a federal judge who requires that the government facilitate its return to the United States so that due process is provided in deportation procedures.
The Trump administration has recognized in judicial presentations that Abrego García’s removal to El Salvador was in mistake, because he violated an order of the United States Immigration Court in 2019 that protected Abrego García from deportation to his native country, according to the registers of the Immigration Court. An immigration judge had determined that Abrego García would probably face persecution by local gangs that had allegedly terrified him already his family.
However, the administration argued that Abrego García should not be returned to the United States because he is a member of the transnational saving gang MS-13, a claim that his family and lawyers have denied. In recent weeks, Trump administration officials have been publishing the interactions of Abrego García with the Police over the years, despite the lack of corresponding criminal charges.
In March, Abrego García’s family filed a demand for their deportation. The American district judge Paula Xinis in Maryland finally ordered the Trump administration to facilitate her return to the United States, the United States Supreme Court said that the April 10 ruling.
Initially, Abrego García was sent to the notorious prison of El Salvador, but it was believed that he was later transferred to a different installation in the country.
The criminal investigation that led to the charges was launched in April when the federal authorities began to analyze the circumstances of a 2022 traffic stop by Abrego García by the Tennessee road patrol, according to the sources. Abrego García was arrested for speeding in a vehicle with eight passengers and told the Police that they had been working on the construction in Missouri.
According to the images of the 2022 traffic stop body, Tennessee’s soldiers, after questioning Abrego García, discussed their suspicions that Abrego García could transport people for money because nine people were traveling without luggage, but Abrego García was not received or accused.
The photo provided by Murray Osorio PLLC shows Kilmar Abrego García.
MURRAY OSORIO PLLC VIA AP
The officers finally allowed Abrego García to continue with only one warning about an expired driving license, according to a report on the stop published last month by the United States National Security Department.
When asked what circumstances have changed since Abrego García was not arrested during that traffic stop in Tennessee, Bondi replied: “What has changed is that Donald Trump is now president of the United States, and our borders are again safe again, and thanks to the bright light that has provided Abrego García, this investigation continued with the really incredible police work, and we could do a track international similarity from the international length of continuing.
Asked about Pierre Thomas of ABC News, he asked if this should be seen as a separated civil case resolution in Maryland in which a federal judge ordered the Government to facilitate the return of Abrego García, the attached attorney general Todd Blanche said: “There is a big difference between what the state of the game was before the indication and after the indication It was because it was a arrest because it was an arrest for which the government was presented and it was the one that the government occurred and it was the one that the arrest occurred and it was the one that the arrest occurred.
As ABC News first reported last month, the Department of Justice had silently investigated the Tessee traffic stop. As part of the investigation, the federal agents at the end of April visited a federal prison in Talladega, Alabama, to question José Ramon Hernández-Reyes, a convicted criminal who was the registered owner of the vehicle that Abrego García was driving when he stopped in the interest 40 East of Nashville, sources previously to ABC News. Hernández-Reyes was not present at the traffic stop.
Hernández-Reyes, 38, currently celebrates a 30-month sentence for re-entered the US again. UU. After a sentence for serious crime prior to the illegal transport of foreigners.
After receiving a limited immunity, Hernández-Reyes supposedly told researchers that a “taxi service” based in Baltimore was previously operated. He claimed to have met Abrego García around 2015 and said he had hired him on multiple occasions to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to several places in the United States, sources told ABC News.
When the details of the Tennessee traffic stop were advertised for the first time, Abrego García’s wife said that her husband sometimes transported groups of construction companions between work sites.
“Unfortunately, Kilmar is currently imprisoned without contact with the outside world, which means that he cannot respond to the statements,” said Jennifer Vásquez Sura in mid -April.
Senator Chris Van Hollen de Maryland, who flew to El Salvador and met with Abrego García shortly after his deportation, said the Trump administration on Friday, gave up “with respect to his return.
“After months of ignoring our Constitution, it seems that the Trump administrator has harmed our demands for fulfilling judicial orders and due process to Kilmar Abrego García,” Van Hollen published in X. “This has never been about man, it is about his constitutional rights and everyone’s rights. “
Abrego García entered the United States illegally when he was a teenager in 2012, according to judicial records. He had been living in Maryland during the last 13 years and married Vásquez Sura, an American citizen, in 2019. The couple has a son together.
Laura Romero of ABC News contributed to this report.
