(AFP) – The Salvadoran migrant at the heart of a row over US President Donald Trump’s hardline deportation policies pleaded not guilty on Friday to human smuggling charges. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, 29, was summarily deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March and brought back to the United States last week. He was immediately arrested on his return and charged in Nashville, Tennessee, with smuggling undocumented migrants around the United States between 2016 and 2025. Abrego Garcia entered a plea of not guilty to the criminal charges on Friday before a federal district judge, US media reported.
The US Supreme Court had ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly deported to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia was flown back to the United States on June 6, but Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted to reporters that his return resulted from an arrest warrant presented to Salvadoran authorities. Abrego Garcia was living in the eastern state of Maryland until he became one of more than 200 people sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador as part of Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Most of the migrants who were summarily deported were alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has declared a foreign terrorist organization. Justice Department lawyers later admitted that Abrego Garcia — who is married to a US citizen — was wrongly deported due to an “administrative error.” Abrego Garcia had been living in the United States under protected legal status since 2019, when a judge ruled he should not be deported because he could be harmed in his home country.
Bondi alleged that Abrego Garcia “played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring” and was a smuggler of “children and women” as well as members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13. She said Abrego Garcia would be returned to El Salvador upon completion of any prison sentence in the United States.
© 2024 AFP
