Progress

Trump made some noise about spitting on the courts. Guess what happened then.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in U.S. custody after being illegally deported and will now face criminal charges

The courts ordered the administration to facilitate his return after he was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran native whose deportation by the Trump administration was declared illegal by the Supreme Court and generated a national furor, is back in U.S. custody and will face federal human trafficking charges in Tennessee.

Abrego Garcia was secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in Nashville last month on two felony charges: transporting undocumented immigrants and conspiring with others to do so. The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, when police found Abrego Garcia at the wheel and nine other men in an SUV, all of whom were Hispanic and lacked identification, according to the indictment.

The indictment was unsealed Friday after Trump administration officials acknowledged Abrego Garcia was in custody of U.S. authorities. Abrego Garcia’s return was first reported by ABC News.

Abrego Garcia’s return follows months of extraordinary brinkmanship between the Trump administration and federal courts, a Supreme Court rebuke, diplomatic intrigue and a domestic political crisis over the episode.

Abrego Garcia, who allegedly entered the U.S. illegally more than a decade ago, had been living in Maryland when the Trump administration deported him to El Salvador in March. The deportation violated a 2019 immigration-court order that barred the U.S. from sending him there because he was at risk of being targeted by a local gang.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return. For months, the administration publicly resisted that order. At times, Trump and his top aides suggested Abrego Garcia would never return to the United States.

“There is no scenario where Abrego Garcia will be in the United States again,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last month during a hearing before a Senate appropriations panel.