While awaiting trial on allegations of human smuggling, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was freed from Tennessee’s jail on Friday to be with his family in Maryland.
After being wrongfully deported in March, the Salvadoran national’s case became a focal point of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy. In response to a court order, the Trump administration detained him on criminal charges after bringing him back to the United States in June.
Abrego Garcia was eligible for pretrial release, but his lawyers had kept him in custody because they were concerned that the Republican government may try to deport him again right away if he was released. A recent decision in a different case, which mandates that immigration officers give Abrego Garcia time to contest any deportation order, helped to ease some of their concerns.
After two months, Abrego Garcia left the Putnam County jail on Friday with two other guys and defense lawyer Rascoe Dean. He was dressed in black pants and a white button-down shirt with short sleeves. Instead of talking to reporters, they climbed into a white SUV and drove away.
Abrego Garcia must go straight to Maryland as per the court’s release order, where he would be held in home detention with his brother serving as his custodian. He can only leave the house for work, religious services, and other authorized activities, and he must submit to electronic surveillance.
In a statement released Friday, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, the lawyer representing Abrego Garcia in his deportation case in Maryland, said that his client has been reunited with his devoted family for the first time since he was wrongfully sent to an infamous jail in El Salvador in March.
“We all know that he is far from safe, even though his release brings some relief,” Sandoval-Moshenberg stated. His family is still in danger of being torn apart by ICE imprisonment or deportation to an unidentified third nation.
The criminal lawyers representing Abrego Garcia filed a motion earlier this week, requesting that the judge dismiss the smuggling charge. They said that Garcia is being tried as a punishment for contesting his transfer to El Salvador.
Defense lawyer Sean Hecker reaffirmed in a statement on Friday that his client was wrongfully detained, deported, and imprisoned due to the government’s retaliatory attack on a man who dared to resist the Administration’s ongoing attack on the rule of law. He is appreciative that significant due process has been made available to him through American courts.
Abrego Garcia, who was stopped for speeding in Tennessee in 2022, has entered a not guilty plea to the smuggling accusations. A Tennessee Highway Patrol officer’s body camera captures a composed conversation with Abrego Garcia. The officers talked among themselves about their suspicions of smuggling while the automobile was carrying nine people. Abrego Garcia, however, was just given a warning and permitted to keep driving.
In testimony, a Department of Homeland Security agent stated that he didn’t start looking into the traffic stop until April of this year, when the government was under increasing pressure to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States.
Abrego Garcia, who has lived in Maryland for years and has an American wife and kids, entered the country illegally. According to court documents, an immigration judge in 2019 rejected his asylum request but gave him protection from deportation back to El Salvador, where he has a legitimate fear of violence. While Homeland Security granted him a work visa, he had to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement once a year.
Homeland Security officials have stated that they want to deport Abrego Garcia to an unidentified third nation, despite the fact that doing so would violate the judge’s ruling.
