Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who made national news as mainstream media outlets incorrectly labeled him a “wrongly deported Maryland man”, was returned to the U.S. from a maximum-security prison in his home country to face charges of human smuggling and other crimes, but a federal magistrate has denied the U.S. government’s petition to keep Garcia detained until his trial date.
The suspected MS-13 gang member was indicted by a Tennessee grand jury in late May, which found that Abrego Garcia “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens” for profit over the past nine years. The indictment included charges of “unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain” and “conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain”
The criminal charges stem from a video of a 2022 traffic stop in Putnam County by the Tennessee Highway Patrol allegedly showing the smuggling, though Garcia was not charged at the time of the incident.
