By Ben Finley
The Associated Press
To hear the Trump administration tell it, Kilmar Abrego Garcia smuggled thousands of people across the country who were living in the U.S. illegally, including members of the violent MS-13 gang, long before his mistaken deportation to El Salvador. In allegations made public nearly three months after his removal, U.S. officials say Abrego Garcia abused the women he transported, while a co-conspirator alleged he participated in a gang-related killing in his native El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia’s wife and lawyers offer a much different story. They say the now 29-year-old had as a teenager fled local gangs that terrorized his family in El Salvador for a life in Maryland. He found work in construction, got married and was raising three children with disabilities before he was mistakenly deported in March.
The fight became a political flashpoint in the administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement. Now it returns to the U.S. court system, where Abrego Garcia appeared June 6 after being returned from El Salvador. He faces new charges related to a large human smuggling operation and is in federal custody in Tennessee.
Speaking to NBC’s Kristen Welken in a phone interview June7 President Donald Trump said it was not his decision to bring Abrego Garcia back. “The Department of Justice decided to do it that way, and that’s fine,” he said. “There are two ways you could have done it, and they decided to do it that way.” Trump said it should “be a very easy case.”
In announcing Abrego Garcia’s return Attorney General Pam Bondi called him “a smuggler of humans and children and women” in announcing the unsealing of a grand jury indictment. His lawyers say a jury won’t believe the “preposterous” allegations.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, said his return to the U.S. was long overdue.
“As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights – and the rights of all,” the Maryland Democrat said in a statement. “The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”
Gang threats in El Salvador
Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital city, San Salvador, according to court documents filed in U.S. immigration court in 2019. His father was a former police officer. His mother, Cecilia, sold pupusas, flat tortilla pouches that hold steaming blends of cheese, beans or pork.
The entire family, including his two sisters and brother, ran the business from home, court records state.
“Everyone in the town knew to get their pupusas from ‘Pupuseria Cecilia,'” his lawyers wrote.
A local gang, Barrio 18, began extorting the family for “rent money” and threatened to kill his brother Cesar — or force him into their gang — if they weren’t paid, court documents state. The family complied but eventually sent Cesar to the U.S.
Barrio 18 similarly targeted Abrego Garcia, court records state. When he was 12, the gang threatened to take him away until his father paid them.
The family moved but the gang threatened to rape and kill Abrego Garcia’s sisters, court records state. The family closed the business, moved again, and eventually sent Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
The family never went to the authorities because of rampant police corruption, according to court filings. The gang continued to harass the family in Guatemala, which borders El Salvador.
Life in the U.S.
Abrego Garcia fled to the U.S. illegally around 2011, the year he turned 16, according to documents in his immigration case. He joined Cesar, now a U.S. citizen, in Maryland and found construction work.
About five years later, Abrego Garcia met Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, the records say. In 2018, after she learned she was pregnant, he moved in with her and her two children. 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 Prince George’s County Police did not charge the men. The department said this year it had no further interactions with Abrego Garcia or “any new intelligence” on him. Abrego Garcia has denied being in MS-13.
Although they did not charge him, local police turned Abrego Garcia over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He told a U.S. immigration judge that he would seek asylum and asked to be released because Vasquez Sura was pregnant, according to his immigration case.
The Department of Homeland Security alleged Abrego Garcia was a gang member based on the county police’s information, according to the case. The immigration judge kept Abrego Garcia in jail as his case continued, the records show.
Abrego Garcia later married Vasquez Sura in a Maryland detention center, according to court filings. She gave birth while he was still in jail.
In October 2019, an immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador because of a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution, according to his case. He was released; ICE did not appeal.
Abrego Garcia checked in with ICE yearly while Homeland Security issued him a work permit, his attorneys said in court filings. He joined a union and was employed full time as a sheet metal apprentice.
In 2021, Vasquez Sura filed a temporary protection order against Abrego Garcia, stating he punched, scratched and ripped off her shirt during an argument. The case was dismissed weeks later, according to court records.
Vasquez Sura said in a statement, after the document’s release by the Trump administration, that the couple had worked things out “privately as a family, including by going to counseling.”
“After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar,” she stated.
She added that “Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father, and I will continue to stand by him.”
A traffic stop in Tennessee
In 2022, according to a report released by the Trump administration, Abrego Garcia was stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol for speeding. The vehicle had eight other people and no luggage, prompting an officer to suspect him of human trafficking, the report stated.
Abrego Garcia said he was driving them from Texas to Maryland for construction work, the report stated.
No citations were issued.
Abrego Garcia’s wife said in a statement in April that he sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites, “so it’s entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with others in the vehicle. He was not charged with any crime or cited for any wrongdoing.”
The Tennessee Highway Patrol released video body camera footage this May of the 2022 traffic stop. It shows a calm and friendly exchange between officers and Abrego Garcia as well as the officers discussing among themselves their suspicions of human trafficking before sending him on his way. One of the officers said: “He’s hauling these people for money.” Another said he had $1,400 in an envelope.
An attorney for Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a statement after the release that he saw no evidence of a crime in the footage.
Mistaken deportation and new charges
Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March despite the U.S. immigration judge’s order. For nearly three months, his attorneys have fought for his return in a federal court in Maryland. The Trump administration described the mistaken removal as “an administrative error” but insisted he was in MS-13.
His abrupt release from El Salvador closes one chapter and opens another in the months-long standoff.
The charges he faces stem from the 2022 vehicle stop in Tennessee but the human smuggling indictment lays out a string of allegations that date back to 2016 but are only being disclosed now.
A co-conspirator also alleged that Abrego Garcia participated in the killing of a gang member’s mother in El Salvador, prosecutors wrote in papers urging the judge to keep him behind bars while he awaits trial. The indictment does not charge him in connection with that allegation.
“This is what American justice looks like,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in announcing Abrego Garcia’s return and the unsealing of a grand jury indictment.
Speaking to NBC’s Kristen Welker in a telephone interview President Donald Trump said it was not his decision to bring Abrego Garcia back.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney disagreed. “There’s no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,” attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.