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“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, was flown back to the United States to face criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants within the U.S., Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday…
“According to the indictment, 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 U.S.-Mexico border to destinations in the country…
“Garcia was deported on March 15, 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 U.S. immigration judge's 2019 order barring him from being sent to El Salvador… After Abrego Garcia's lawyers challenged the basis for his deportation, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.” Reuters
Here’s our recent coverage of Abrego Garcia. The Flip Side
Both sides applaud Abrego Garcia’s return to the US:
“If the Justice Department can convict Abrego García, that will be a political win against liberals who tried to make the case a referendum on an innocent ‘Maryland father.’ But whatever the outcome, the main winner from the White House’s decision to yield to the law is the judiciary. Especially vindicated is Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s measured approach to the Trump administration…
“The court’s ‘facilitate’ ruling in April was a unanimous nudge. It stopped short of demanding Abrego García’s release on any specific timeline because that might interfere with the president’s foreign affairs powers in dealing with El Salvador. But the court took note of the administration’s appalling behavior in this case, citing it twice in a ruling against the Trump administration in a different immigration decision.”
Jason Willick, Washington Post
“In an oval office meeting in April with Salvadoran President Bukele, Trump made it clear that Garcia would not ever be returning to the United States. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Garcia ‘is never coming back to our country.’ The standoff between the Trump Administration and the courts led to talks of a constitutional crisis. Indeed, it was hard to see how the impasse would be resolved. Then, without any warning, Garcia was moved from El Salvador to face charges in Tennessee…
“Garcia’s return to the United States, even though he faces serious charges, is a real victory for the rule of law. As Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen put it in a statement: ‘As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights—and the rights of all. The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.’”Martin Burns, Common Dreams
Other opinions below.
“At the time, any inference of human trafficking rested entirely on circumstantial evidence and racial profiling. (A known construction worker, Abrego Garcia reported that he and his passengers were on their way to a construction site.) After pulling him over, Tennessee police reported Abrego Garcia and his passengers to federal law enforcement—but federal officers directed local police to let them continue along their way…
“The federal government did not see fit to even detain or investigate him then. Now it has brought felony charges against him. What changed?…
“Prosecutors have [also] now brought forth a raft of disturbing allegations about Abrego Garcia’s behavior, accusing him of regularly smuggling guns, transporting migrants for cash, and attempting to solicit child pornography. But it has provided literally no supporting evidence for its claims about child pornography.”
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
“ABC News reported, citing unnamed sources, that the decision to pursue the criminal case led high-ranking Tennessee prosecutor Ben Schrader to resign due to ‘concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.’…
“If his resignation is connected to the criminal case against Abrego Garcia, then the administration’s political posturing through the Justice Department has led to the loss of yet another career prosecutor — one of this administration’s sordid legacies.”
Jordan Rubin, MSNBC
“The videotape [of the 2022 stop] mystified many with how Abrego Garcia was allowed to go along his way. Here was an undocumented immigrant stopped with an expired license in a car with eight others traveling from Texas to Maryland. He gave a false statement, and the officer suspected human trafficking but let him go…
“It is alleged that the person whom Abrego Garcia described as his ‘boss’ at a construction job was Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, an illegal migrant previously convicted of human smuggling. The black 2001 Chevrolet Suburban belonged to Hernandez Reyez…
“Now, the indictment details a broader array of evidence. The grand jury found evidence of extensive human trafficking violations over nine years. The indictment speaks of cooperating witnesses prepared to implicate Abrego Garcia in an international smuggling operation involving guns, narcotics, and humans that included over a one hundred such transports.”
Jonathan Turley, Fox News
“Abrego Garcia never should have been in the United States in the first place, and he abused the asylum process and benefited from lax enforcement — in both the Obama and first Trump administrations — to stay here. The Trump administration was right to want to deport him. But a lesson of this episode is that sloppiness borne of haste and recalcitrance toward the courts when in error are a waste of time and of political capital, on top of any injustices involved.”
The Editors, National Review
