Kilmar Abrego Garcia will be returned to the United States to face criminal charges, law enforcement source says

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, will be returned to the US, where he will face federal criminal charges, a law enforcement source told CNN.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, will be returned to the US, where he will face federal criminal charges, a law enforcement source told CNN. For months, the Trump administration has been locked in an intense standoff with the federal judiciary over court orders for the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador, where he was mistakenly deported in mid-March, in a situation that one federal judge warned could present an “incipient crisis” between the two branches. Abrego Garcia has been indicted on two criminal counts in the in the Middle District of Tennessee: conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain. The indictment unsealed Friday afternoon accuses Abrego Garcia and others of bringing to the US in recent years thousands of undocumented immigrants from various Central American countries, “many of whom were MS-13 members and associates.” The administration’s posture and legal arguments in the case had consistently frustrated both conservative and liberal jurists alike, who raised alarm bells about officials’ apparent disregard for due process rights given their cavalier response to the deportation, which several different administration lawyers described as an “administrative error” that they were powerless to rectify. But Abrego Garcia’s forthcoming return is far from a guarantee that he will remain in the US long-term. The administration’s decision to deport him to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador violated a 2019 order from a judge that said he could not be deported to his home country because of fears that he would face gang violence. That mandate, however, did not preclude the government from removing him to a third country.