Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in the United States to face criminal charges related to human smuggling, the Department of Justice announced.
Abrego Garcia, a deported Salvadoran national accused of domestic abuse by his wife and suspected of MS-13 gang affiliation, is back to the U.S. where he faces criminal charges for allegedly transporting illegal migrants across the country, Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed Friday. The Salvadoran national is accused of making over 100 trips smuggling migrants across the country.
“Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant, and they agreed to return him to our country,” Bondi said during a press conference. “We anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador.”
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi continued. “They found this was his full time job, not a contractor — he was a smuggler of humans and children and women.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Abrego Garcia in March and deported him back to his home country of El Salvador later that month, originally transferring him to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison facility in the Central American country built to house gang bangers.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation enraged Democrats, who argued that his deportation shouldn’t have taken place given his previous withholding of removal protection from an immigration judge. Maryland Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen visited the country to advocate for his return, and he was followed by a slate of House Democrats who did the same.
The Trump administration has long stood by his deportation, noting local law enforcement suspicions in Maryland that he is an MS-13 gang member and previous accusations of domestic abuse by his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura.
Abrego Garcia was once pulled over on a Tennessee highway in 2022 and suspected of human smuggling after the Tennessee Highway Patrol discovered he was transporting eight passengers with no apparent luggage. The vehicle Abrego Garcia was driving that night belonged to Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, an illegal migrant who was sentenced to prison for human smuggling in 2020.
“For the last 2 months, the media and Democrats have burnt to the ground any last shred of credibility they had left as they glorified Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a known MS13 gang member, human trafficker, and serial domestic abuser,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a prepared statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Today, the United States of America confronts Kilmar Abrego Garcia with overwhelming evidence — he is being indicted by a grand jury for human smuggling, including children, and conspiracy,” Noem continued. “Justice awaits this Salvadoran man.”
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