Kilmar Ábrego García, a 29-year-old from El Salvador who was wrongfully deported in March, has been returned to the United States to face two federal criminal charges.
He has been charged with participating in a trafficking conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to other regions of the country over a period of several years.
El Salvador decided to release Mr Ábrego García after the US filed an arrest warrant, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday. His lawyer described the claims as “preposterous”.
The White House had been battling a US Supreme Court order to “facilitate” his repatriation since April, when he was imprisoned in El Salvador alongside over 250 other deportees.
Mr Ábrego García was charged with conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of unauthorised aliens in a two-count grand jury indictment filed in a Tennessee court last month and unsealed on Friday.
The grand jury decided that Mr Ábrego García had a “significant role” in an alien smuggling organisation that brought thousands of illegal immigrants to the US.
According to the charges, he carried unauthorised people more than 100 times between Texas and Maryland, among other locations, beginning in 2016.
The indictment also says that he transported members of MS-13, a foreign terrorist organisation recognised by the United States.
The Trump administration claimed Mr Ábrego García was a member of the international Salvadorian gang, which he disputed.
Bondi accused Mr Ábrego García of importing firearms and narcotics into the US for the gang, but he was not charged with any connected crimes.
He appeared in court for a first hearing on Friday in Nashville, Tennessee. An arraignment hearing is scheduled for June 13, at which US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes will determine whether there are grounds to keep him jailed pending his trial.
For the present, Mr Ábrego García is still in federal detention.
Mr Ábrego García’s lawyers have previously claimed that he has never been convicted of any
criminal offence, including gang membership, in the US or El Salvador.
During a Friday news conference, one of his attorneys, Simon Sandoval Moshenberg, termed the charges “preposterous” and the actions an “abuse of power”.
“The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order,” Mr Moshenberg said. “Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him.”
He added, “This is an abuse of power, not justice. The government should give him a full and fair trial in front of the same immigration judge who heard the case in 2019.”
On Friday, President Donald Trump referred to Mr Ábrego García as a “bad guy” and praised the Department of Justice’s decision to repatriate him to the US for trial.
Mr Ábrego García entered the United States unlawfully as a youngster from El Salvador. In 2019, he was seized alongside three other males in Maryland and imprisoned by federal immigration authorities.
However, an immigration judge granted him refuge from deportation on the grounds that he would be at risk of persecution by local gangs in his home country.
On March 15, he was deported as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, after Trump used the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime statute that authorises presidents to detain or deport natives and citizens of an enemy country.
Mr Ábrego García was transferred to the notoriously harsh Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador.
While government lawyers first said he was transported there due to an “administrative error”, the Trump administration declined to order his return.
A weeks-long legal and political dispute ensued about whether the government was required to “facilitate” his return to his home in Maryland, the United States.
After Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen requested to see Mr. Ábrego García in El Salvador, he was released to a different prison in that country.
On Friday, Van Hollen stated that “this is not about the man; it is 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.”
El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a strong Trump admirer, stated on social media on Friday that if the government “requested the return of a gang member to face charges, of course we would not refuse.”
Mr Ábrego García is scheduled to appear in court in Tennessee on Friday. The US will argue that he be remanded in pretrial custody “because he poses a danger to the public and a serious risk of flight”, according to the detention petition.
