To hear the Trump administration tell it, Kilmar Abrego Garcia smuggled thousands of people across the country who were living in the U.S. illegally, including members of the violent MS-13 gang, long before his mistaken deportation to El Salvador. In allegations made public nearly three months after his removal, U.S. officials say Abrego Garcia abused the women he transported, while a co-conspirator alleged he participated in a gang-related killing in his native El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia’s wife and lawyers offer a much different story. They say the now 29-year-old had as a teenager fled local gangs that terrorized his family in El Salvador for a life in Maryland. He found work in construction, got married and was raising three children with disabilities before he was mistakenly deported in March.
The fight became a political flashpoint in the administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement. Now it returns to the U.S. court system, where Abrego Garcia appeared Friday after being returned from El Salvador. He faces new charges related to a large human smuggling operation and is in federal custody in Tennessee.
Speaking to NBC’s Kristen Welken in a phone interview Saturday President Donald Trump said it was not his decision to bring Abrego Garcia back. “The Department of Justice decided to do it that way, and that’s fine,” he said. “There are two ways you could have done it, and they decided to do it that way.” Trump said it should “be a very easy case.”
In announcing Abrego Garcia’s return Attorney General Pam Bondi called him “a smuggler of humans and children and women” in announcing the unsealing of a grand jury indictment. His lawyers say a jury won’t believe the “preposterous” allegations.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, said his return to the U.S. was long overdue.
“As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights – and the rights of all,” the Maryland Democrat said in a statement. “The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”