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A Salvadoran citizen whom the US government erroneously deported to a maximum security jail in his native country has returned to the US, only to be indicted for his alleged role in a human “smuggling ring”.
US prosecutors have charged Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia with conspiring to bring undocumented migrants into the country, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday.
He “played a significant role” in the alleged conspiracy, said US attorney-general Pam Bondi. “This is what American justice looks like.”
Abrego Garcia and co-conspirators allegedly sought to bring individuals from Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras and elsewhere into the US, collecting payments for their illegal transportation between 2016 and 2025, according to court documents.
Abrego Garcia has been at the heart of fraught legal proceedings as President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders accelerated mass deportations and triggered lawsuits from plaintiffs who argue these measures are illegal.
Abrego Garcia’s case drew national attention after the government admitted he was sent to El Salvador as a result of an “administrative error” — a transfer that a federal judge in a separate case labelled “wholly illegal”.
A lawyer representing Abrego Garcia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If convicted, he will complete his sentence in the US before being returned to El Salvador, Bondi said.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who has resisted returning deportees to the US, agreed to transfer Abrego Garcia after Washington presented him with an arrest warrant, she added.
Trump in March invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime statute, to deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.
The US government alleges Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which Trump has designated a foreign terrorist organisation. Abrego Garcia has rejected this claim, and a US immigration judge in 2019 withheld his removal to El Salvador because of “a clear probability of future persecution”.
It remains unclear how the indictment will impact a separate case that was filed in Maryland to fight Abrego Garcia’s removal. The US Supreme Court in April directed the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the US.
“There’s a big difference between what the state of play was before the indictment and after the indictment,” said Todd Blanche, deputy US attorney-general. “As far as whether it makes the ongoing litigation in Maryland moot, I would think so.”
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