Kilmar Abrego Garcia Neighborhood in El Salvador
USA TODAY visited Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s home neighborhood in El Salvador to get a better sense of who the man is.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man whose deportation to El Salvador made him a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, has been indicted in federal court in the Middle District of Tennessee on conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.
Abrego Garcia, of Maryland, appeared in an after-hours court hearing June 6 in Nashville and will be arraigned at 10 a.m. June 13, a spokesman confirmed.
During a White House press briefing earlier June 6, United States Attorney General Pamela Bondi said El Salvador returned Abrego Garcia to the country after being presented with warrants for his arrest.
Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in a nine-year smuggling ring, Bondi said. He was indicted by a grand jury May 21.
“He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country,” Bondi said, noting that MS13 gang members and violent gang terrorist organization members were among the thousands of undocumented immigrants brought in to the U.S. during Abrego Garcia’s trips.
“This is especially disturbing because Abrego Garcia is also alleged with transporting minor children,” Bondi said. “The defendant traded the innocence of minor children for profit.”
During the June 6 press conference, Bondi alleged that Abrego Garcia is responsible for additional crimes, though none have been charged as of press time for this story.
“Abrego Garcia is a danger to our community,” Bondi said.
On March 15, Abrego Garcia was flown with a group of hundreds of prisoners to El Salvador, where most were locked in the country’s infamous maximum security prison, known as “CECOT.”
The Trump administration said the deportees, originally from El Salvador and Venezuela, were members of gangs MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, though most had not been charged with crimes in the U.S.
Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal worker and undocumented immigrant, became the poster boy for what critics called Trump’s assault on due process rights.
What the indictment says
TheU.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee unsealed the indictment against Abrego Garcia on June 6.
Abrego Garcia, and co-conspirators not named in the indictment, is accused of facilitating and taking money from undocumented people to help them move through the country for nearly 10 years, according to federal court records.
“Over the course of the conspiracy, the co-conspirators knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no authorization to be present in the United States, and many of those were MS-13 members and associates,” according to the indictment.
The group worked together to help people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador and Mexico cross the border “for profit and private financial gain,” the indictment said.
To move people, they reconfigured vehicles with “after-market unattached seating rows, and they transported children on floorboards,” the indictment said.
Court documents accuse Abrego Garcia, and another conspirator, of meeting undocumented people in Houston, Texas, and then transporting them across the country. The group also transported firearms and drugs from Texas for distribution and resale in Maryland, the indictment said.
On Nov. 30, 2022, the Tennessee Highway Patrol pulled over a Chevrolet Suburban driven by Abrego Garcia on Interstate 40 in Putnam County.
“There were nine additional passengers in the Suburban, all of whom were Hispanic males, and none of whom had any identification,” the indictment said.
Abrego Garcia told state troopers they were coming from St. Louis, where they’d been working on construction sites, but no one had any luggage or tools. They were on their way back to Maryland, Abrego Garcia told state troopers, the indictment said.
A license plate reader captured the car not in St. Louis, but in Houston the week before the traffic stop.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol let the group go, according to the indictment.
USA Today contributed.
