Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, has returned to the US to face criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants to the US, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday.
Mr Abrego Garcia faces two criminal counts in an indictment filed in federal court in Tennessee on May 21, more than two months after his March 15 deportation, court records showed.
Ms Bondi said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to return Mr Abrego Garcia to the US after officials presented his government with an arrest warrant.
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Ms Bondi said in a press conference.
In a statement, Mr Abrego Garcia's lawyer, Andrew Rossman, said it would now be up to the US judicial system to ensure he received due process.
“Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along – that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,” said Mr Rossman, a partner at law firm Quinn Emanuel.
Mr Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador, despite an immigration judge's 2019 order granting him protection from deportation to El Salvador after finding he was likely to be persecuted by gangs if returned there, court records show.
Critics of President Donald Trump pointed to the erroneous deportation as an example of the excesses of the Republican president's aggressive approach to stepping up deportations.
