By BEN FINLEY
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador became a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, has been back in the United States for more than two weeks after being charged with human smuggling in Tennessee.
But the 29-year-old Maryland construction worker’s future is far from certain.
A federal judge has raised questions about the strength of the government’s smuggling allegations, including its claim Abrego Garcia is in the violent MS-13 street gang. The judge on Sunday denied federal prosecutors’ request to keep Abrego Garcia in jail while he awaits trial. The conditions of his release will be discussed at a court hearing on Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors have said they will appeal the judge’s decision. Even if Abrego Garcia is released, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expected to detain him and try to deport him.
Here’s what to know about Abrego Garcia’s case:
The smuggling charges
Abrego Garcia is charged with smuggling throughout the U.S. hundreds of people living in the country illegally, including children and members of MS-13, from 2016 to 2025.
The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee during which he was driving a vehicle with nine passengers who didn’t have any luggage.
Body camera footage shows a calm exchange between officers and Abrego Garcia. The officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. One of the officers says, “He’s hauling these people for money.” Another says Abrego Garcia had $1,400 in an envelope.
Abrego Garcia was allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
A Department of Homeland Security special agent, Peter Joseph, testified at a June 13 court hearing in Nashville that witnesses testified to a grand jury that they saw Abrego Garcia smuggling people, guns or drugs and that he earned upward of $100,000 a year.
A not guilty plea
Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty at the June 13 hearing. His attorneys have characterized the case as an attempt by Trump’s Republican administration to justify his mistaken deportation in March.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers told the judge that some government witnesses cooperated to get favors regarding their immigration status or criminal charges they were facing. Joseph, the special agent, acknowledged in testimony that one witness was living in the U.S. illegally with a criminal record and is now getting preferred status.
Casting doubt, an assistant federal public defender, Richard Tennent, noted that a witness claimed that Abrego Garcia would drive from Maryland to Houston — a 1,400-mile (2,250-kilometer) trip taking about 24 hours — two or three times per week.
Judge raises questions
In her ruling Sunday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes rejected the government’s request to keep Abrego Garcia in jail.
The judge echoed defense attorneys’ doubts that Abrego Garcia could make multiple roundtrips per week from Maryland to Houston, which she wrote would “approach physical impossibility.”
The judge also noted inconsistencies about Abrego Garcia’s alleged ties to MS-13, writing that two witnesses offered “general statements” and “hearsay.”
Meanwhile, a third witness who’d known Abrego Garcia for 10 years said “there were no signs or markings, including tattoos, indicating that Abrego is an MS-13 member,” the judge wrote.
Holmes also noted the contrast between the government’s allegations and the fact that Abrego Garcia “has no reported criminal history of any kind.”
Original MS-13 allegation
Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, and helped his family run a business selling pupusas, tortilla pouches filled with cheese, beans or pork.
In 2011, the year he turned 16, he fled a local gang that extorted and terrorized his family, court records state. He traveled illegally to Maryland, where his brother already lived as a U.S. citizen.
Abrego Garcia found work in construction and began a relationship with an American woman, Jennifer Vasquez Sura. In 2018, he moved in with her and her two children after she became pregnant with his child. They lived in Prince George’s County, just outside Washington.
In March 2019, Abrego Garcia went to a Home Depot seeking work as a laborer when he and three other men were detained by local police, court records say. They were suspected of being in MS-13 based on tattoos and clothing.
A criminal informant told police that Abrego Garcia was in MS-13, court records state, but police did not charge him and turned him over to ICE.
Abrego Garcia then went before a U.S. immigration judge and sought asylum, which was denied. The judge, however, granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador.
The judge said Abrego Garcia had demonstrated a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution there, court records state. He was released.
Abrego Garcia checked in with ICE yearly while Homeland Security issued him a work permit, his attorneys said. He joined a union and was employed full-time as a sheet metal apprentice.
In February, the Trump administration designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization, and in March it deported Abrego Garcia to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The administration described its violation of the immigration judge’s 2019 order as an administrative error. Trump and other officials doubled down on claims Abrego Garcia was in MS-13.
US could try to deport him again
Holmes acknowledged in Sunday’s ruling that considering release was “little more than an academic exercise.” Prosecutors had told Holmes that ICE would take Abrego Garcia into custody if he were released.
Another public defender, Will Allensworth, told the judge he expects a full hearing before an immigration judge, who would have to consider Abrego Garcia’s 2019 protection order from deportation to El Salvador.
If the U.S. wanted to try to deport Abrego Garcia somewhere else, the government would have to prove the other country wouldn’t just send him to El Salvador, Allensworth said.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an Ohio State University law professor, said the Trump administration would be “fully within its legal power to attempt to remove him to some other country.”
“The Trump administration would have to pull its diplomatic levers,” the professor added. “It’s unusual. But it’s not unheard of.”
Abrego Garcia could contest the criminal allegations in immigration court while demonstrating his ties to the U.S., García Hernández said.
“The fact that he has become the poster boy for the Trump administration’s hard-line approach to immigration bolsters his persecution claim,” the professor said. “Because he’s a known quantity at this point, and not just in El Salvador or Central America, but really across much of the world.”
Associated Press reporter Travis Loller in Nashville, Tenn., contributed to this report.