Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador returned to U.S., faces charges

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, has been returned to the United States to face federal criminal charges, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday.

For months, the Trump administration has been locked in an intense standoff with the federal judiciary over court orders for the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador, where he was mistakenly deported in mid-March, in a situation that one federal judge warned could present an “incipient crisis” between the two branches.

Abrego Garcia has been indicted on two criminal counts in the in the Middle District of Tennessee: conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.

The indictment unsealed Friday afternoon accuses Abrego Garcia and others of partaking in a conspiracy in recent years in which they “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 members and associates.”

Standoff between Trump and judiciary

The administration’s posture and legal arguments in the case had consistently frustrated both conservative and liberal jurists alike, who raised alarm bells about officials’ apparent disregard for due process rights given their cavalier response to the deportation, which several different administration lawyers described as an “administrative error” that they were powerless to rectify.

In April, for instance, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Abrego Garcia “is not coming back to our country.”

“President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story. If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back,” she said.

But Abrego Garcia’s forthcoming return is far from a guarantee that he will remain in the US long-term. The administration’s decision to deport him to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador violated a 2019 order from a judge that said he could not be deported to his home country because of fears that he would face gang violence. That mandate, however, did not preclude the government from removing him to a third country.

Officials have previously said if he were returned to the US, they may deport him to another country or attempt to wipe away the 2019 order. The administration has alleged that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which the government has designated as a foreign terrorist organization, though his attorneys have disputed that claim.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has allowed a fact-finding process to unfold so she can figure out what the government has been doing to comply with her directive that officials bring Abrego Garcia back to the US. But the case had largely faded into the background in recent weeks as that discovery process has dragged on mostly out of public view.

ABC News first reported the developments.