Kilmar Ábrego García, the man whom the Donald Trump administration mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador in March, returned to the US on Friday to face criminal charges.
In a press briefing on Friday, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that a federal grand jury in Tennessee had indicted Ábrego García on counts of illegally smuggling undocumented people as well as of conspiracy to commit that crime.
“Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant and they agreed to return him to our country,” Bondi said of Ábrego García. She thanked the Salvadorian president, Nayib Bukele, “for agreeing to return him to our country to face these very serious charges”.
“This is what American justice looks like upon completion of his sentence,” Bondi added.
Ábrego García – a 29-year-old Salvadorian whose wife and young child in Maryland are US citizens – appeared in federal court in Nashville on Friday 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.
In a statement to the Hill on Friday, Ábrego García’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg accused the Trump administration of having “disappeared” his client “to a foreign prison in violation of a court order”.
“Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him,” he added.
Sandoval-Moshenberg also said: “This shows that they were playing games with the court all along. Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished – not after.”
Sandoval-Moshenberg said the White House’s treatment of his client was “an abuse of power, not justice”. He called for Ábrego García to face the same immigration judge who had previously granted him a federal protection order against deportation to El Salvador “to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent” there.
That, Sandoval-Moshenberg argued, “is the ordinary manner of doing things” – and he said that is what the US supreme court had ordered in April.
Bondi on Friday maintained that federal grand jurors found that Ábrego García “has played a significant role” in an abusive smuggling ring that had operated for nearly a decade.
The attorney general added that if convicted, Ábrego García would be deported to El Salvador after completing his sentence in the US.
Officials on Friday portrayed the indictment of Ábrego García by a 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,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that it had been the justice department that decided to bring Ábrego García back.
According to the indictment, Ábrego García worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the United States illegally, and then transported them from the US-Mexico border to other destinations in the country.
Ábrego García often picked up immigrants in Houston, and made more than 100 trips between Texas and Maryland from 2016 to 2025, the indictment says.
The indictment also alleges Ábrego García transported firearms and drugs. According to the indictment, one of his co-conspirators belonging to the same ring was involved in the transportation of immigrants whose tractor-trailer overturned in Mexico in 2021, resulting in 50 deaths.
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.”
Ábrego García entered the US without permission around 2011 while fleeing gang violence in El Salvador.
Despite the judicial order meant to prevent his deportation to El Salvador, on 15 March, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials deported him to El Salvador after arresting him in Maryland.
He was held in the so-called Center for Terrorism Confinement, a controversial mega-prison better known as Cecot.
The Trump administration subsequently admitted that Ábrego García’s deportation had been due to an “administrative error”. But it has repeatedly cast him as an MS-13 gang member on television – a claim which his wife, a US citizen, and his attorneys staunchly reject.
Ábrego García also had no criminal record in the US before the indictment announced on Friday, according to court documents.
On 4 April, federal judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate” Ábrego García’s return from El Salvador after his family filed a lawsuit in response to his deportation.
The supreme court unanimously upheld Xinis’s order a week later. In an unsigned decision, the court said that Xinis’s decision “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Ábrego García’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador”.
A Friday statement from the US senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said the Trump administration had “finally relented” to his demand to afford Ábrego García due process.
“This is not about the man,” said Van Hollen, who visited Ábrego García in El Salvador in April. “It’s about his constitutional rights – and the rights of all.”
Bukele wrote on X, in part, that he would not refuse the Trump administration’s request for “the return of a gang member to face charges”.
Reuters contributed to this report
