Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, is back in the United States to face human smuggling charges.
A federal grand jury indictment accuses Abrego Garcia of smuggling undocumented immigrants throughout the country over a period of nine years, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a Friday afternoon news conference.
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WATCH HEREBondi said the grand jury found Abrego Garcia played a "significant role" in a human smuggling ring.
"He was a smuggler of humans and children and women," Bondi also claimed.
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SIGN UP What is in the indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia?
The indictment alleges that from about 2016 to 2025, Abrego Garcia and others conspired to bring migrants illegally to the United States from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and elsewhere, through Mexico and across the Texas-Mexico border.
Abrego Garcia and a co-conspirator “ordinarily picked up the undocumented aliens in Houston, Texas area” after they had crossed the border, the indictment alleges. The pair then allegedly would transport “the undocumented aliens from Texas to other parts of the United States to further the aliens’ unlawful presence in the United States,” the indictment said.
In the indictment, the government said Abrego Garcia and six other uncharged and unnamed co-conspirators communicated using cellphones and social media to unlawfully transport the undocumented immigrants.
They allege that Abrego Garcia would hold the cellphones of those he was transporting within the U.S. and would return them at the end of their trip. “They did this to ensure the undocumented aliens could not and would not contact anyone else during the trip,” the government said in the indictment.
The indictment also claims Abrego Garcia and other conspirators would reconfigure vehicles to transport the immigrants and that children would travel on floorboards. On one occasion, the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped Abrego Garcia while he was driving a Suburban with “an after-market third row of seats placed where a cargo area should be, which was occupied by undocumented passengers.”
The government further alleged that Abrego Garcia and co-conspirators collected financial payments from the immigrants and transferred money between one another to conceal the origin of the payments.
The two-count indictment sealed in a Tennessee court alleges that those transported included members of the MS-13 gang and Abrego Garcia was a member, an accusation his lawyer and wife have denied.
Abrego Garcia appeared in federal court in Nashville Friday clean shaven with his hands and feet shackled and wearing a beige button-down shirt, jeans and hiking boots. Through an interpreter, he told the judge he understood the issues.
Public defender Will Allensworth argued for Abrego Garcia’s release, but the judge ordered him held until his next hearing, which was scheduled for June 13.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration admitted it mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia due to what it called an "administrative error."
But border czar Tom Homan said in a White House press conference on April 28 he doesn't accept the term "mistake," saying "there was an oversight, there was a withholding order," and claiming that the facts around the withholding order had changed, labeling Abrego Garcia "now a terrorist."
In April, the Supreme Court ruled the federal government must "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S. from El Salvador, but the Trump administration resisted. The administration said Abrego Garcia's return was up to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who refused to return him.
During Friday's news conference Bondi thanked Bukele for returning Abrego Garcia before saying, "This is what American justice looks like."
Abrego Garcia's lawyer accused the government of "playing games" with the court system.
"The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order. Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they're bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him," Abrego Garcia's attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement to News4.
"This shows that they were playing games with the court all along. Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you're punished, not after. This is an abuse of power, not justice. The government should put him on trial, yes-but in front of the same immigration judge who heard his case in 2019, which is the ordinary manner of doing things, 'to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,' as the Supreme Court ordered."
"Two months ago, the United States Supreme Court ordered the government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to facilitate his release from custody in El Salvador, and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. Those are the words of the Supreme Court," Sandoval-Moshenberg told News4.
"I think we can all agree that this is not what happened today. What happened today is not the manner in which this would have been handled had Mr. Abrego Garcia never been improperly sent to El Salvador. What happened today is an abuse of power. What happened today is the exact opposite of due process, because due process means the opportunity to defend yourself before you're punished, not afterwards," Sandoval-Moshenberg continued.
He added that Abrego Garcia would "vigorously defend" against the charges.
"I think what this really goes to show is that this administration instead of simply admitting and apologizing -- this matter could have gone away within a week or two after the case being filed -- instead of simply admitting their mistake, they'll stop at nothing at all, even some of the most preposterous charges imaginable, just to avoid admitting that they made a mistake," Sandoval-Moshenberg said. "Which is what everyone knows happened in this case."
The charges stem from a 2022 vehicle stop in which the Tennessee Highway Patrol suspected him of human trafficking. A report released by the Department of Homeland Security in April states that none of the people in the vehicle had luggage, while they listed the same address as Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime, while the officers allowed him to drive on with only a warning about an expired driver’s license, according to the DHS report. The report said he was traveling from Texas to Maryland, via Missouri, to bring in people to perform construction work.
In response to the report’s release in April, Abrego Garcia’s wife said in a statement that he sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites, “so it’s entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with others in the vehicle. He was not charged with any crime or cited for any wrongdoing.”
Abrego Garcia lived in the U.S. for roughly 14 years, during which he worked construction, got married and was raising three children with disabilities, according to court records. Trump administration officials said he was deported based on a 2019 accusation from Maryland police that he was an MS-13 gang member. Abrego Garcia denied the allegation and was never charged with a crime, his attorneys said.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who visited El Salvador in April and met with Abrego Garcia, commented on his return to the United States in a statement.
"For months the Trump Administration flouted the Supreme Court and our Constitution, Today, they appear to have finally relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and with the due process rights afforded to everyone in the United States," Van Hollen said.
"As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights — and the rights of all. The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along," he added.
NBC News contributed to this report.
