Abrego Garcia to remain detained for now on migrant smuggling charges

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(Corrects to remove broken story links in first two paragraphs)

By Luc Cohen

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) -Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the migrant returned to the U.S. last week after being wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador, will remain detained for now ahead of his trial on criminal charges of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle migrants into the United States.  

At the conclusion of a hearing on Friday in federal court in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes said she would rule at a later date on Abrego Garcia’s bid to be released on bail pending trial.

Robert McGuire, the U.S. attorney in Nashville, said Abrego would be placed into immigration detention even if Holmes orders his release.

Earlier on Friday, Abrego, as he prefers to be known, pleaded not guilty to the charges.

President Donald Trump’s administration has portrayed Abrego’s May 21 indictment as vindication of its aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration. Before the charges were unsealed on June 5, officials alleged he was a member of the MS-13 gang and said they would not bring him back. 

The Justice Department’s decision to return him to the U.S. to face criminal charges is a potential off-ramp for Trump’s administration from its escalating confrontation with the judiciary over whether it complied with a court order to facilitate Abrego’s return. 

The Republican president’s critics say his swift removal without a hearing showed the administration prioritized increased deportations over due process, the bedrock principle that people in the U.S., whether citizens or not, can contest governmental actions against them in the courts. 

In the indictment, Abrego was charged with working with at least five co-conspirators as part of a smuggling ring to bring immigrants to the United States illegally, then transport them from the U.S.-Mexico border to destinations across the country. Abrego often picked up migrants in Houston, making more than 100 trips between Texas and Maryland between 2016 and 2025, the indictment alleges.

Abrego is also accused of transporting firearms and drugs. His lawyers call the accusations false.

“The only reason they’re calling him dangerous now is to justify the denial of due process and subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment,” defense lawyer Dumaka Shabazz told the hearing. “They need to cover that up.”

COOPERATING WITNESSES

Abrego, a Maryland resident whose wife and young child are U.S. citizens, could face 10 years in prison for each migrant he smuggled. That means he could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted, according to prosecutors.

To bolster the argument that Abrego should be detained, McGuire called to the stand Peter Joseph, an agent with Homeland Security Investigations who is investigating the case. Joseph testified he had interviewed two of Abrego’s alleged co-conspirators who told him that Abrego was a driver in their migrant smuggling network. 

Joseph said both alleged co-conspirators, whom he did not name, were foreign nationals seeking leniency in their criminal cases and relief from deportation. During cross-examination, Abrego’s lawyers suggested those witnesses may have been telling law enforcement agents what they wanted to hear.

“They’re going to give all these other people these deals to stay in the country just to send (Abrego) away,” Shabazz said in his argument to Holmes at the close of the hearing. “The weight of these cooperators is zero.”

Ben Schrader, the former chief of the criminal division for the Nashville U.S. Attorney’s Office, resigned in protest last month over Abrego’s indictment, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters last week.

‘ADMINISTRATIVE ERROR’

Abrego was deported on March 15 to El Salvador, despite a 2019 immigration court ruling that he not be sent there because he could be persecuted by gangs. Officials called his removal an “administrative error.”

In a separate civil case, Greenbelt, Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis is investigating whether the Trump administration violated her order to facilitate Abrego’s return from El Salvador. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld that order. 

Abrego’s lawyers are urging Xinis to hold administration officials in contempt and impose fines for stonewalling their requests for information about the steps the administration took to facilitate his return. 

The Trump administration says Xinis should drop her probe because it complied with her order by deciding to bring Abrego back to face criminal charges. His lawyers disagree and say that for the administration to be in compliance, his immigration case must be handled as it would have been had he not been deported. 

In another case indicative of the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to immigration policy,  officials said on Friday they would not release Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent face of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, despite a judge’s ruling that he cannot be held in immigration detention on the basis that his presence in the country was harmful to U.S. foreign policy.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in Nashville, Tennessee;Editing by Noeleen Walder, Rosalba O’Brien and Rod Nickel)