Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran citizen deported by mistake under the Trump administration, appeared in a Tennessee court for a hearing to determine the conditions of his release before trial.
Using a shirt with the orange prison and a Spanish interpreter, Abrego heard while the judge magistrate of the United States, Barbara Holmes, raised concerns about the government's case, including the credibility of her key witnesses.
Abrego, 29, was deported from Maryland to El Salvador on March 15 despite a 2019 court order that blocks his removal due to the threat of gang violence in his country of origin. He was returned to the United States on June 6 after public pressure and legal intervention. He declared himself innocent of the positions of conspiring with others to smuggle migrants in the United States.
His case has become a symbol of the hard immigration posture of the Trump administration and its legal consequences. Rights' defenders say that positions are an attempt to justify violating the civil rights of Abrego by illegally deporting it.
Judge Holmes had already ruled that Abrego could not be arrested in jail pending trial, stating that the government did not show that it was a danger to the public. That decision contradicted the statement of former President Trump that Abrego was a “bad” with a “horrible past.”
“The court will give Abrego the due process that is guaranteed,” Holmes wrote.
Prosecutors claim that between 2016 and 2025, Abrego helped transfer migrants from the United States and Mexico to other parts of the country, often driving between Texas and Maryland. They claim that he made more than 100 trips and sometimes brought his own children to create a cover story.
But Judge Holmes gave little weight to these statements, noting that they largely come from cooperating witnesses with a criminal record or pending deportation cases.
“Each cooperating witness on whose statements the government argument rests for detention is to win something,” he wrote. A key witness, the alleged leader of the smuggling ring, has been deported five times and has two sentences for serious crimes.
Abrego's wife, the little son, and his two children of a previous relationship, all American citizens live in Maryland. While Abrego can now face immigration custody, his legal team is also fighting a separate civil case that questions if Trump's officials violated an order from the Supreme Court to return it to the United States.
The Department of Justice initially said that its deportation was an “administrative error” and resisted efforts to bring it back. The decision to do it only came after a great jury from Nashville accused him of smuggling.
(Reuters)
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