Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose false deportation to El Salvador became a Flashpoint in the immigration of President Donald Trump, has been back in the United States for more than two weeks after he was charged because of the smuggling of people in Tennessee.
But the future of 29-year-old Maryland Construction Worker is anything but secure.
A federal judge has raised questions about the strength of the government’s smuggling allegations, including his assertion Abrego Garcia is in the violent MS-13 street gang. The judge denied the state prosecutor’s request to keep Abrego Garcia in prison on Sunday while waiting for the process. The conditions of his release will be discussed in a court hearing on Wednesday.
The prosecutors’ prosecutors have announced that the judge’s decision was made. Even if Abrego Garcia is released, the US immigration and customs authority is expected to hold it and try to deport it.
Here is what you should know about the case of Abrego Garcia:
The smuggling costs
Abrego Garcia will be charged in the country from 2016 to 2025 due to the smuggling in the United States, including children and members of MS-13.
The fees come from a traffic stop from 2022 to accelerate to Tennessee by driving a vehicle with nine passengers that had no luggage.
Body Camera film material shows a composed exchange between officers and Abrego Garcia. The officers discussed their suspicion of smuggling. One of the officers says: “He drives these people for money.” Another says Abrego Garcia has $ 1,400 in an envelope.
Abrego Garcia was allowed to drive on with just one warning.
Peter Joseph, a special representative of the Ministry of Homeland Security, said at a court hearing on June 13 in Nashville that witnesses to a gigantic jury said that they smuggled people, weapons or drugs and earned over $ 100,000 a year.
A non -guilty plea
Abrego Garcia was not guilty at the hearing on June 13th. His lawyers characterized the case as a attempt by the Republican government of Trump to justify his wrong deportation in March.
The lawyers from Abrego Garcia informed the judge that some state witnesses had worked together to receive favors in relation to their immigration status or criminal charges with which they were confronted. Joseph, the Special Agent, admitted that a witness in the United States lived illegally with criminal records and now preferred status.
Casting doubts, a deputy public defender of the federal government, Richard Tennent, found that a witness claimed that Abrego Garcia would go from Maryland to Houston-a trip of 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers), which lasts about 24 hours or three times a week.
Judge raises questions
In her judgment on Sunday, the American judge Barbara Holmes rejected the government’s proposal to keep Abrego Garcia in prison.
The judge repeated the doubts of the defenders that Abrego Garcia could produce several round trips a week from Maryland to Houston, which she wrote, would “approach the physical impossibility”.
The judge also stated inconsistencies about Abrego Garcia’s alleged relationships with MS-13 and wrote that two witnesses offered “general statements” and “hearsay”.
In the meantime, a third witness, who had known Abrego Garcia for 10 years, said “There were no signs or markings, including tattoos, which indicates that Abrego is an MS-13 member,” wrote the judge.
Holmes also found the contrast between the government’s allegations and the fact that Abego Garcia “did not report any criminal history of all kinds”.
Original MS-13 allegations
Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital San Salvador and helped his family to run a business where pupusas, tortilla bags are filled with cheese, beans or pork.
In 2011, the year in which he turned 16, he fled from a local gang that blackmailed and terrorized his family. He illegally traveled to Maryland, where his brother already lived as a US citizen.
Abrego Garcia found work under construction and started a relationship with an American, Jennifer Vasquez Sura. In 2018 he moved into her and her two children after getting pregnant with his child. They lived in Prince George’s County, just outside of Washington.
In March 2019, Abrego Garcia went to a home depot that was looking for work as a worker when he and three other men were arrested by the local police, according to court files. They were suspected of being in MS-13, based on tattoos and clothing.
A criminal informant told the police that Abrego Garcia was in MS-13, the court files, but the police did not charge him and handed him over to ice.
Abrego Garcia then went to a US immigration judge and looked for asylum what was refused. However, the judge granted him protection against retreat to El Salvador.
The judge said Abrego Garcia had proven a “justified fear” of gang persecution there, according to court files. He was released.
Abrego Garcia checked ICE annually, while the home protection published him a work permit, his lawyers said. He joined a union and was employed as a sheet metal trainee.
In February, the Trump government described MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization and deported Abrego Garcia to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March.
The administration described its violation of the order of the immigration judge in 2019 as an administrative error. Trump and other officials doubled in claims that Abro Garcia was in MS-13.
We could try to deport him again
In the decision on Sunday, Holmes admitted that the publication was “little more than an academic exercise”. The prosecutors had announced Holmes that Ice Abrego Garcia would take custody if he was released.
Another public defender wants Allensworth, told the judge that he would expect a complete hearing in front of an immigration judge who had to consider the protection order of Abego Garcia from 2019 from deportation to El Salvador.
If the United States wanted to try to deport Abrego Garcia elsewhere, the government would have to prove that the other country would not simply send it to El Salvador, said Allensworth.
César Cuauhtémoc GarcÃa Hernández, a law professor from the state university in Ohio, said that the Trump government would “completely lie in the legal authority to remove it to another country”.
“The Trump government would have to pull its diplomatic levers,” added the professor. “It’s unusual. But it’s not unknown.”
Abrego Garcia could deny the criminal allegations before the immigration court and at the same time demonstrate his connections to the United States, said GarcÃa Hernández.
“The fact that he has become the flagship for the hard approach of the Trump government has become an immigration approach,” said the professor. “Because at that time he is a well -known amount and not only in El Salvador or Central America, but in large parts of the world.”
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The reporter of Associated Press Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.
