Fresh from his return to the U.S., suspected human smuggler Kilmar Abrego Garcia has new demands from the Trump administration.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia, a deported Salvadoran national who has since been allowed to return to America following outcry from Democrats, are demanding he be released from jail, according to newly submitted court documents. The illegal migrant’s defense team also suggested that he may now qualify for asylum because of his incarceration in El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison.
“Mr. Abrego Garcia should be released,” his lawyers stated, claiming prosecutors are wrong to deem him as a flight risk. “Because the government is not entitled to seek detention in this case, Mr. Abrego Garcia respectfully asks the Court to deny the government’s motion for detention.”
“Indeed, Mr. Abrego Garcia was recently illegally deported to El Salvador and confined in a notoriously inhuman Salvadorian prison,” his lawyers said, speaking of the Terrorism Confinement Center, the mega-prison facility built to house El Salvador’s gang population. “Thus, it appears he may now have a new basis (under either asylum law and/or the Convention Against Torture) to seek additional protection against deportation to El Salvador.”
The Trump administration facilitated Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. Friday so he could face charges related to his alleged participation in an illicit migrant smuggling operation.
Between 2016 and 2025, he allegedly helped smuggle illegal migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and other countries into the U.S., according to an indictment from the Department of Justice. Abrego Garcia — himself an illegal migrant — allegedly made more than 100 trips from Texas to Maryland and other states as part of the conspiracy.
In addition to transporting illegal migrants, federal prosecutors say Abrego Garcia used his trips to purchase firearms and narcotics in Texas for distribution and resale in Maryland, according to court documents.
“Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant, and they agreed to return him to our country,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said during a Friday press conference. “We anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador.”
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi added. “They found this was his full time job, not a contractor — he was a smuggler of humans and children and women.”
Abrego Garcia was suspected of human smuggling as early as 2022 when a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer pulled him over and noticed he was driving nine other individuals in his car from Texas to Maryland — with no luggage to be found and everyone listing Abrego Garcia’s address as their own. The vehicle he was driving during that incident was owned by an illegal migrant convicted of migrant smuggling.
Law enforcement citations reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation connect Abrego Garcia to another individual, Ismael Melara Flores, who was pulled over in Arkansas in November 2022 while driving approximately 10 people in his car. Melara Flores similarly told the officer that he was driving everyone from Texas to Maryland.
Abrego Garcia illegally entered the U.S. around 2011 and remained in the country until his deportation to his home country in March, according to court documents. In reaction to his removal, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly traveled to El Salvdor to decry his detention and demand he be returned to the U.S.
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