The Trump administration has moved to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from imprisonment in a Salvadoran facility in order to file a criminal case against him with charges stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, an attorney for Abrego Garcia told The Hill.
The return of Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported despite being protected from removal to his home country, comes after administration officials had fought court rulings ordering his return. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he would never live a “peaceful” life in the U.S.
Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding as he was driving from St. Louis to his home in Maryland, and video of the incident shows the officer skeptical of a van full of passengers without any luggage.
Newly unsealed court documents show the government is charging Abrego Garcia with two counts related to unlawful transportation of undocumented migrants in connection with the incident.
“The government disappeared Kilmar 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,” attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told The Hill in a statement.
“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. This is an abuse of power, not justice. The government should put him on trial, yes—but in front of the same immigration judge who heard his case in 2019, which is the ordinary manner of doing things, “to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” as the Supreme Court ordered.”
The White House, Justice Department, and State Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.
ABC News first reported the development.
The Trump administration had been ordered by numerous courts to return Abrego Garcia, mostly recently in an April Supreme Court decision saying the White House must “facilitate” his return.
For months the White House argued that only meant supplying a [plane if the government of El Salvador wished to return him. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said during a televised Oval Office meeting with Trump that he would not.
But in another recent case, the Trump administration on Wednesday arranged for a Guatemalan man wrongly deported to Mexico to return to the U.S. on the return leg of a deportation flight, the first known instance of their compliance with a court order directing the return of a migrant.
And on Monday, the Justice Department alerted the lower court judge overseeing the ongoing proceedings in the Abrego Garcia case that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was leading negotiations over the man’s return.
The case against Abrego Garcia will no doubt ignite significant scrutiny.
The traffic stop yielded no further action at the time, and Abrego Garcia told the officers that he was driving coworkers to Maryland and that they had been working on a construction job in St. Louis.
Updated: 3:53 p.m.