A man who was mistakenly deported from the US state of Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, has been returned to the US to face charges of transporting illegal immigrants.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was brought back to the United States from El Salvador and charged with trafficking undocumented migrants, Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
Mr Abrego Garcia's return marked an inflection point in a case seized on by critics of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown as a sign that the administration was disregarding civil liberties in its push to step up deportations.
Mr Abrego Garcia - a 29-year-old Salvadoran whose wife and young child in Maryland are US citizens - appeared in federal court in Nashville yesterday evening.
His arraignment was set for 13 June, when he will enter a plea, according to local media reports. Until then, he will remain in federal custody.
If convicted, he would be deported to El Salvador after serving his sentence, Ms Bondi said. The Trump administration has said Mr Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, an accusation that his lawyers deny.
Officials have portrayed the indictment of Mr Abrego Garcia by a federal grand jury in Tennessee as vindication of their approach to immigration enforcement.
"The man has a horrible past, and I could see a decision being made, bring him back, show everybody how horrible this guy is," Mr Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that it was the Justice Department that decided to bring Mr Abrego Garcia back.
According to the indictment, Mr Abrego Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators as part of a smuggling ring to bring immigrants to the United States illegally, then transport them from the US-Mexico border to destinations in the country.
Mr Abrego Garcia often picked up migrants in Houston, making more than 100 trips between Texas and Maryland between 2016 and 2025, the indictment alleges.
It also accuses Mr Abrego Garcia of transporting firearms and drugs.
According to the indictment, one of Mr Abrego Garcia's co-conspirators belonging to the same ring was involved in the transportation of migrants whose tractor trailer overturned in Mexico in 2021, resulting in 50 deaths.
Mr Abrego Garcia's lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, called the criminal charges "fantastical" and a "kitchen sink" of allegations.
"This is all based on the statements of individuals who are currently either facing prosecution or in federal prison," he said. "I want to know what they offered those people."
The indictment also led to a high-level resignation in the federal prosecutor's office in Nashville, with news that Ben Schrader, chief of the criminal division for the Middle District of Tennessee, had resigned in protest.
A 15-year veteran of the US Attorney's Office, Mr Schrader had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the administration's actions, and the indictment of Mr Abrego Garcia was "the final straw," a person familiar with the situation told Reuters. Mr Schrader declined to comment.
Mr Schrader had posted notice of his resignation on LinkedIn last month, around the time the indictment was filed under seal, but he did not give a reason.
Mr Abrego Garcia was deported on 15 March, more than two months before the charges were filed.
He was briefly held in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, despite a US immigration judge's 2019 order barring him from being sent to El Salvador because he would likely be persecuted by gangs.
Ms Bondi said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele had agreed to return Mr Abrego Garcia after US officials presented his government with an arrest warrant.
"The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring," she told a press conference.
In a court filing yesterday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to keep Mr Abrego Garcia detained pending trial.
Citing an unnamed co-conspirator, prosecutors said Mr Abrego Garcia joined MS-13 in El Salvador by murdering a rival gang member's mother. The indictment does not charge Mr Abrego Garcia with murder.
Mr Abrego Garcia could face ten years in prison for each migrant he is convicted of transporting, prosecutors said, a punishment that potentially could keep him incarcerated for the rest of his life.
