Kilmar Abrego Garcia reportedly on his way back to US

WASHINGTON – Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, is reportedly on his way back to the United States to face criminal charges. 

ABC News reports that Abrego Garcia will be facing criminal charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S. 

The backstory:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a 29-year-old El Salvadorian national. He fled his home country and came to the U.S. when he was 16. He has since lived in Maryland. He has three children and a wife, Jennifer Vasquez.

On March 12, Abrego Garcia was arrested in Baltimore after working a shift as a sheet metal apprentice and picking up his 5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house, according to his lawyers. 

He was then sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT which activists say is rife with abuses. Three days later, he was deported.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement say they removed him to a Salvadoran prison over a 2019 accusation that he was in the MS-13 gang. 

READ MORE: DOJ says Kilmar Abrego Garcia will “never walk freely in the US”

Abrego Garcia’s ties to MS-13 were never proven and he has repeatedly denied being a gang member. His lawyers argue that the U.S. government “has never produced an iota of evidence” that he is affiliated with MS-13 or any other street gang.

His eventual expulsion to El Salvador violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that shielded him from deportation to his native country. The judge ruled that Abrego Garcia had credible fears of being killed if he returned to El Salvador. 

Abrego-Garcia has no criminal record in the U.S. outside of a few traffic violations. He had regularly checked in with immigration authorities.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials later admitted in a court filing that his deportation was due to an “administrative error” but the Trump administration has since maintained that there is nothing they can do to bring him back.