Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongly deported under US President Donald Trump's immigration policies, was released from prison in Tennessee. Photo / Getty Images
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongly deported under US President Donald Trump's immigration policies, was released from prison in Tennessee. Photo / Getty Images
A wrongly deported Salvadoran man returned to the United States during a fierce row over US President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies has been released from prison, where he had been detained on human smuggling charges, his lawyer told AFP.
The US Supreme Court had ordered the Trump administration to“facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly deported in March to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador.
He was returned in June and promptly arrested and charged with trafficking undocumented migrants – but released from prison in Tennessee at the order of a US magistrate judge.
“Today, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is free,” his attorney Sean Hecker said in a statement to AFP.
The case has become emblematic of Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration.
Right-wing supporters praised the Republican President’s toughness but legal scholars and human rights advocates have blasted what they say is a slipshod rush to deport people in violation of basic US laws.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura listened as activists spoke before her husband Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s hearing in Nashville. Photo / Getty Images
Hecker said Abrego Garcia was now “en route to his family in Maryland after being unlawfully arrested and deported, and then imprisoned, all because of the Government’s vindictive attack on a man who had the courage to fight back against the administration’s continuing assault on the rule of law”.
The lawyer said Abrego Garcia was “grateful that his access to American courts has provided meaningful due process”.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said they had hired a private security company to bring him to Maryland, according to ABC News.
But the saga may not be over for the Salvadoran.
The Trump administration is not barred from initiating “lawful immigration proceedings upon Abrego Garcia’s return to Maryland” – provided it gives 72 hours’ notice before deporting him to a third country – under a July federal court ruling.
Multiple US media outlets reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had notified his legal team that he had been ordered to report to immigration officials in Baltimore on Monday, and may be sent to the East African nation of Uganda.
The DHS did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the reports.
But the White House responded to his release with a statement describing him as a “criminal illegal alien, wife-beater” and member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 – insisting he would “face justice for his crimes”.
“It’s an insult to his victims that this left-wing magistrate intervened to put him back on the streets,” Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson posted on X, formerly Twitter.
“Garcia will be subject to ankle monitoring to ensure the safety of the American public until further action can be taken.”
The Salvadoran’s attorneys accused federal prosecutors of “vindictive and selective prosecution” in a motion seeking to dismiss charges they said had been brought “because he refused to acquiesce in the government’s violation of his due process rights”.
‘Alien smuggling ring’
Abrego Garcia was living in the eastern state of Maryland until he became one of more than 200 people sent to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot) mega-prison as part of Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.
"Free": a Salvadoran man has been released amid the immigration crackdown. Photo / Getty Images
Most of the migrants who were summarily deported were alleged members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has declared a foreign terrorist organisation.
Trump described Abrego Garcia in June as a “pretty bad guy” and said he “should’ve never had to be returned”.
But Justice Department lawyers admitted that Abrego Garcia – who is married to a US citizen – had been wrongly deported because of an “administrative error”.
He 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.
Attorney-General Pam Bondi alleged that Abrego Garcia had “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, who denies wrongdoing and was indicted by a grand jury in Tennessee, would be returned to El Salvador upon completion of any prison sentence.
According to the indictment, Abrego Garcia was involved in smuggling undocumented migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and other countries into the United States between 2016 and earlier this year.
His trial in his human smuggling case is set to begin in January 2027.
“Every person is afforded their right to due process by the constitution and, from the start, we’ve asked that due process be followed – meaning everyone receives proper notice of the allegations against them and has an opportunity to be heard,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore said in a statement.
“This was never about one person, but about the laws that govern all people in our country. Several courts have made decisions in this case, and we expect the Trump administration to follow those decisions.”
