Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Devan Cole and Katelyn Polantz, CNN

(CNN) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, has been returned to the United States to face federal criminal charges, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday.

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 partaking in a conspiracy in recent years in which they “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 members and associates.”

Abrego Garcia and his family say he fled gang violence in El Salvador and have denied allegations he’s an MS-13 member.

Standoff between Trump and judiciary

Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported in March to El Salvador due to an “administrative error,” according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. He was sent to the country’s notorious mega-prison where he was held for weeks before being moved to another facility.

The case became a political lightning rod for the Trump administration and its deportation program, while Trump’s shifting rhetoric about whether he could return the Maryland father had raised questions about the administration’s willingness to comply with the courts.

But the administration’s initial acknowledgement in a court filing that it mistakenly deported him opened it up to heightened scrutiny, even among Republicans otherwise supportive of Trump’s agenda.

Across the aisle, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen drew headlines when he visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, but his party has debated how much to embrace the Salvadoran national’s removal and the due process argument as a rallying cry of opposition to the administration.

Trump had said this spring that he could secure Abrego Garcia’s return – contradicting previous remarks made by him and his top aides who said the US did not have the ability to bring him back because he was in the custody of a foreign government, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Trump administration must “facilitate” his return.

“You could get him back. There’s a phone on this desk,” ABC News’ Terry Moran said to Trump during an exclusive interview that aired in late April.

“I could,” Trump replied.

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.

In April, for instance, Bondi insisted that Abrego Garcia “is not coming back to our country.”

“President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story. If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back,” she said.

But Abrego Garcia’s 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.

Officials have previously said if he were returned to the US, they may deport him to another country or attempt to wipe away the 2019 order. The administration has alleged that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which the government has designated as a foreign terrorist organization, though his attorneys have disputed that claim.

US District Judge Paula Xinis has allowed a fact-finding process to unfold so she can figure out what the government has been doing to comply with her directive that officials bring Abrego Garcia back to the US. But the case had largely faded into the background in recent weeks as that discovery process has dragged on mostly out of public view.

Judge had barred Abrego Garcia’s removal

Abrego Garcia arrived in the United States in 2012 as a 16-year-old. And when he was arrested and subsequently handed over to immigration authorities seven years later, he said he feared a possible return to El Salvador.

The immigration judge in the case ultimately ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor and prohibited his removal to his home country.

As the Trump administration continues its aggressive crackdown on immigration, it has been accused of wrongly deporting at least two other men.

Earlier this week, one of the men — a Guatemalan national who was hastily deported to Mexico — returned to the US.

ABC News first reported that Abrego Garcia was en route to the US.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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