It seemed the family of the wrongly deported Maryland man had finally had their pleas answered. After nearly three long months of waiting, the Trump administration was bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States. But the husband and father of three's return came with a caveat: the Department of Justice was now accusing him of trafficking undocumented immigrants around the country.
"For three months, these three children and Kilmar's wife have been wondering, 'When will their loved one come home? When will their husband come home? When will their father come home?'" said Ama Frimpong, legal director of the Maryland-headquartered immigrant and workers' rights organization CASA, of which Abrego Garcia is a member. "And after these three months, the government is still delaying reunification of this family. They are continuing to play games with the lives of Jennifer and with the lives of these three children."
"This family has suffered enough," she added.
Abrego Garcia, 29, faces two federal charges — one count of "conspiracy to transport aliens" and one count of "transport of undocumented aliens." The DOJ filed the grand jury indictment on May 21, but the Trump administration announced Abrego Garcia's return and the unsealed charges against him at a press conference last week. He appeared before a U.S. district judge in a Tennessee courtroom Friday just hours after re-entering the country.
Despite the indictment listing six co-conspirators, Abrego Garcia is the only person charged.
Attorney General Pam Bondi thanked El Salvador President Nayib Bukele for agreeing to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. to face prosecution during a Friday news conference.
"This is what American justice looks like," Bondi said, noting that the El Salvador native will be deported back to his home country after he is convicted and completes his sentence.
"The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring," Bondi said. "They found this was his full-time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country."
The Justice Department began an investigation in April after examining the Tennessee Highway Patrol's 2022 traffic stop of Abrego Garcia, sources told ABC News. Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding with eight other passengers and told troopers they were doing construction work in Missouri. Body camera footage shows the troopers discussing the sight as suspicious, but they did not ticket or charge him.
The investigation began after Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador. After his mistaken deportation was made public, The New York Times reported that Trump administration officials worked to manufacture an excuse for his removal.
The decision to pursue the charges against Abrego Garcia also led a high-ranking federal prosecutor, Ben Schrader, to resign from his job at the Tennessee U.S. Attorney's office, sources told ABC News. Schrader, who served in the Tennessee office in Nashville for 15 years, was concerned that authorities were bringing the case for political reasons, the sources said.
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Lawyers for Abrego Garcia called the charges against him "preposterous" during a Friday evening press conference and dismissed the notion that he would actually be convicted of the alleged crime.
"What happened today is an abuse of power. What happened today is the exact opposite of due process because due process means the opportunity to defend yourself before you're punished, not afterwards," said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Abrego Garcia.
The administration will "stop at nothing at all — even some of the most preposterous charges imaginable — just to avoid admitting that they made a mistake, which is what everyone knows happened in this case," he added.
Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Labor Organizing Network, of which Abrego Garcia is also a member, said that the administration has shown "amazing disregard for the Constitution, for due process and for basic decency."
"To date, this administration has treated Kilmar the way it treats all non-white immigrants: as if they are guilty until proven innocent," he said. "That is a notion that is in hostility to all of our shared constitutional values."
Abrego Garcia was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement while on his way home from work and removed to El Salvador in mid-March, a move that violated a 2019 court order that protected him from deportation to his home country over the threat of gang violence. In court documents, a former Justice Department official had admitted that Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador was an "administrative error." He was initially held in the notorious, maximum security CECOT prison, but Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said after a visit to the Central American country to meet Abrego Garcia that he had been transferred to a different facility.
The Trump administration stalled for weeks in returning Abrego Garcia as federal courts and the Supreme Court had ordered in April. It accused the steel worker of being a member of MS-13, an allegation his family members and attorneys have denied, and argued that he should not be returned to the country as a result. During his time in El Salvador, he had no contact with his attorneys or family.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said that he and the rest of Abrego Garcia's legal team learned of his return from ABC News. As such, he said at the time that they had little to no information about Abrego Garcia's health or the specific jail he would be held in.
They will, however, continue to pursue the litigation in Maryland over his removal in March, Sandoval-Moshenberg said. Judge Paula Xinis is still holding discovery over whether to hold Trump administration actors in contempt over failure to comply with her order to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S.
"If anything, what happened today, to my mind, only increases the notion that they were playing games with her, playing games with her court and playing games with her orders," he said, adding that Abrego Garcia's other immigration status matters will continue after the conclusion of his criminal prosecution.
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Abrego Garcia's legal team filed a brief in his initial removal case arguing that the government flouted Xinis' court orders on Sunday.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Abrego Garcia's wife, learned of his return and indictment from news reports at the same time the rest of the public did, said Frimpong, who said she spoke with Vasquez Sura earlier Friday. In a moment when she and the rest of his family should be celebrating his return, Vasquez Sura is instead left with "mixed emotions."
"Jennifer is, of course, very happy that her husband is back on U.S. soil — at least as far as we know — but, of course, [he's back] under very egregious and horrendous circumstances," Frimpong said.
"He should not be currently held in a jail in Tennessee. He should be at home with Jennifer. He should be at home with his children," she added, stressing how important it is that the government allow him to communicate. "At this point in time, the very first thing that Jennifer is looking for is to be able to hear his voice."
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