SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Sarah N. Lynch and Luc Cohen
Washington: The man mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration has returned to the United States to face criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants within the US, Attorney-General Pam Bondi said.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case has become a flash point for escalating tensions between the presidency and the judiciary, which has blocked a number of Trump’s signature policies. The US Supreme Court had ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Garcia’s return, with liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the government had cited no basis for what she called his “warrantless arrest”.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is led by force by guards through the Terrorism Confinement Centre in Tecoluca, El Salvador in an undated photo.Credit: US District Court for the District of Maryland via AP
The return marks a turning point in a case that became a broader symbol of criticisms of US President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies. Critics, including many congressional Democrats, pointed to it as a sign that the administration was disregarding civil liberties in its push to step up deportations.
But the administration insisted that Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, an accusation that his lawyers denied. It later said it had sent the man accidentally and couldn’t bring him back.
In a court filing on Friday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to have him detained pending trial. They said Garcia got into MS-13 in El Salvador by murdering a rival gang member’s mother, citing a co-conspirator whom they did not name. The indictment did not charge Garcia with murder.
An undated photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.Credit: CASA via AP
On Saturday (AEST), administration officials portrayed his indictment by a grand jury in Tennessee as vindication of their approach – even though the charges were filed on May 21, more than two months after his March 15 deportation.
At a press conference, Bondi said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to return Garcia to the after US officials presented his government with an arrest warrant.
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi said at a press conference.
Garcia will have the chance to enter a plea in court and contest the charges at trial. If he is convicted, he would be deported to El Salvador after serving his sentence, Bondi said.
But federal prosecutors said Garcia could face 10 years in prison for each migrant he transported. That means he could be locked away for the rest of his life, they said.
In a statement, Garcia’s lawyer, Andrew Rossman, said it would now be up to the US judicial system to ensure he received due process.
“Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along – that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,” said Rossman, a partner at law firm Quinn Emanuel.
Garcia was deported to El Salvador, despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order granting him protection from deportation after finding he was likely to be persecuted by gangs if returned there, court records show.
Critics of Trump pointed to the erroneous deportation as an example of the excesses of the Republican president’s aggressive approach. US District Judge Paula Xinis has opened a probe into what, if anything, the Trump administration had done to secure his return.
The indictment alleges that Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the US illegally, and then transport them from the border to other destinations in the country. Garcia often picked up migrants in Houston, the indictment said.
The indictment also charges Garcia and two unidentified co-conspirators with transporting firearms illegally purchased in Texas for resale in Maryland. Garcia also transported illegal narcotics purchased in Texas for resale in Maryland and was on some occasions accompanied on those trips by members and associates of MS-13, according to the indictment.
Reuters
