has been returned to the U.S. to face federal charges in Tennessee after his controversial and mistaken deportation to El Salvador sparked legal battles over due process. The Maryland resident, central to a high-profile immigration case, was charged in a sealed two-count indictment with transporting undocumented individuals across the United States.

Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed his return during a Friday news conference, stating that Abrego Garcia arrived “to face justice.” The indictment accuses him of coordinating a long-running conspiracy to move people from the Texas border to other locations in the U.S. It further alleges that some of those transported were affiliated with MS-13 and that Abrego Garcia exploited his gang ties to expand his smuggling operations.

“This was his full-time job,” Bondi said, asserting that Abrego Garcia conducted over 100 smuggling trips, involving women and children. The indictment outlines that from 2016 to 2025, Abrego Garcia and others moved migrants from countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras through Mexico and across the southern border, then deeper into the U.S.

According to federal documents, he and a co-conspirator typically picked up migrants near Houston, then drove them to destinations nationwide. The group used encrypted communications and altered vehicles to transport people covertly, sometimes forcing children to ride hidden in floorboards. In one instance, the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped him driving a Suburban retrofitted with an extra row of seats where cargo space should have been, filled with undocumented passengers.

Prosecutors allege Abrego Garcia confiscated migrants’ phones during transport to prevent outside contact and coordinated payments through masked financial channels to obscure the money trail. Still, his defense attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, condemned the charges as retaliatory. “This is an abuse of power,” he said. “The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order. Now they’re bringing him back—not to rectify that—but to prosecute him. Due process doesn’t start after you’ve already been punished.”

Abrego Garcia’s wife defended him, maintaining he was innocent. She insisted that he worked in construction and occasionally gave rides to laborers, claiming he had never been cited for wrongdoing during any such incident.

His deportation had previously been ruled unlawful. In April, both a federal judge and the U.S. Supreme Court ordered his return, but the Trump administration resisted. Officials at times placed responsibility on Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who eventually agreed to cooperate following the U.S. presentation of a formal arrest warrant.

This came after the U.S. had already agreed to pay El Salvador $6 million to detain suspected gang members, including alleged associates of Tren de Aragua. Abrego Garcia, suspected of MS-13 ties, was deported despite a 2019 federal court order forbidding such action. He was sent to CECOT prison, infamous for its violent conditions.

The Supreme Court later ruled the deportation illegal and reaffirmed that facilitating his return was mandatory under law. Even so, the Trump administration delayed compliance for months, ignoring mounting judicial pressure. At one point, the courts even threatened contempt.

In a broader ruling last week, a federal judge ordered the administration to give hundreds of detainees in El Salvador’s CECOT facility an opportunity to challenge their detention—a move likely to impact others entangled in similar legal purgatory.