Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose erroneous deportation to El Salvador highlighted a key issue in President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, has returned to the United States and has been back for over two weeks after facing human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
But the 29-year-old Maryland construction worker’s future is far from certain.
A judge in Tennessee decided on Wednesday that Abrego Garcia is entitled to be released while awaiting his trial on the smuggling accusations. However, he remains incarcerated as lawyers debate whether federal prosecutors can prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting him again.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys expressed concern at a Wednesday court hearing that ICE would swiftly deport him before he could stand trial.
During the hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes questioned her authority beyond urging prosecutors to do their utmost to gain cooperation from ICE.
“I have no reservations about my ability to direct the local U.S. Attorney’s office,” the judge said. “I don’t think I have any authority over ICE.”
Holmes did not say when she would file the release order for Abrego Garcia, but it will not happen before Friday afternoon.
Here’s what to know about Abrego Garcia’s case:
The smuggling charges
Abrego Garcia is charged with smuggling throughout the U.S. hundreds of people living in the country illegally, including children and members of MS-13, from 2016 to 2025.
The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee during which he was driving a vehicle with nine passengers who didn’t have any luggage.
Body camera footage shows a calm exchange between officers and Abrego Garcia. The officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. One of the officers says, “He’s hauling these people for money.” Another says Abrego Garcia had $1,400 in an envelope.
Abrego Garcia was allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
A Department of Homeland Security special agent, Peter Joseph, testified at a June 13 court hearing in Nashville that witnesses testified to a grand jury that they saw Abrego Garcia smuggling people, guns or drugs and that he earned upward of $100,000 a year.
A not guilty plea
Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty at the June 13 hearing. His attorneys have characterized the case as an attempt by Trump’s Republican administration to justify his mistaken deportation in March.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers told the judge that some government witnesses cooperated to get favors regarding their immigration status or criminal charges they were facing. Joseph, the special agent, acknowledged in testimony that one witness was living in the U.S. illegally with a criminal record and is now getting preferred status.
Casting doubt, an assistant federal public defender, Richard Tennent, noted that a witness claimed that Abrego Garcia would drive from Maryland to Houston — a 1,400-mile (2,250-kilometer) trip taking about 24 hours — two or three times per week.
Two judges weigh in
Holmes, the magistrate judge, wrote in a ruling on Sunday that federal prosecutors failed to show that Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or a danger to the community. During Wednesday’s hearing, Holmes set many specific conditions for Abrego Garcia’s release, including that he live with his brother.
But she ultimately kept Abrego Garcia in custody for the time being over concerns that ICE would deport him.
Acting U.S. Attorney Rob McGuire told the judge that he would do “the best I can” to secure the cooperation of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE. But the prosecutor noted, “That’s a separate agency with separate leadership and separate directions. I will coordinate, but I can’t tell them what to do.”
But Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Sean Hecker, countered that the departments of Justice and Homeland Security are both within the executive branch and seem to cooperate on other things. For example, ICE has agreed not to deport cooperating witnesses who agreed to testify against Abrego Garcia.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors had tried to stay Holmes’ release order. But it was denied by another federal judge on Wednesday afternoon, who wrote that the government was asking the court to “save it from itself” in a situation that was “completely of its own making.”
U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. wrote that federal prosecutors should be making their arguments to DHS, not a court, “because the Department of Justice and DHS can together prevent the harm the Government contends it faces.”
Original MS-13 allegation
Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, and helped his family run a business selling pupusas, tortilla pouches filled with cheese, beans or pork.
In 2011, the year he turned 16, he fled a local gang that extorted and terrorized his family, court records state. He traveled illegally to Maryland, where his brother already lived as a U.S. citizen.
Abrego Garcia found work in construction and began a relationship with an American woman, Jennifer Vasquez Sura. In 2018, he moved in with her and her two children after she became pregnant with his child. They lived in Prince George’s County, just outside Washington.
In March 2019, Abrego Garcia went to a Home Depot seeking work as a laborer when he and three other men were detained by local police, court records say. They were suspected of being in MS-13 based on tattoos and clothing.
A criminal informant told police that Abrego Garcia was in MS-13, court records state, but police did not charge him and turned him over to ICE.
Abrego Garcia then went before a U.S. immigration judge and sought asylum, which was denied. The judge, however, granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador.
The judge said Abrego Garcia had demonstrated a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution there, court records state. He was released.
Abrego Garcia checked in with ICE yearly while Homeland Security issued him a work permit, his attorneys said. He joined a union and was employed full-time as a sheet metal apprentice.
In February, the Trump administration designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization, and in March it deported Abrego Garcia to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The administration described its violation of the immigration judge’s 2019 order as an administrative error. Trump and other officials doubled down on claims Abrego Garcia was in MS-13.
US could try to deport him again
If Abrego Garcia is taken into ICE custody, the agency would likely try to deport him, his lawyers and experts have said.
Will Allensworth, a public defender for Abrego Garcia, said at the June 13 court hearing that a U.S. immigration judge would have to consider Abrego Garcia’s 2019 protection order from deportation to El Salvador.
If the U.S. wanted to try to deport Abrego Garcia somewhere else, the government would have to prove the other country wouldn’t just send him to El Salvador, Allensworth said.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an Ohio State University law professor, said the Trump administration would be “fully within its legal power to attempt to remove him to some other country.”
“The Trump administration would have to pull its diplomatic levers,” the professor added. “It’s unusual. But it’s not unheard of.”
Abrego Garcia could contest the criminal allegations in immigration court while demonstrating his ties to the U.S., García Hernández said.
“The fact that he has become the poster boy for the Trump administration’s hard-line approach to immigration bolsters his persecution claim,” the professor said. “Because he’s a known quantity at this point, and not just in El Salvador or Central America, but really across much of the world.”
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Associated Press reporter Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.
