Featured Image Credit: CNN
Topics: Crime, El Salvador, Donald Trump, US News
Britt Jones
A Maryland father was sent to El Salvador's notorious mega prison due to an ‘administrative error’, but will be facing criminal charges in the US.
After the mass deportation of over 250 alleged criminals to El Salvador’s Center for Terrorism Confinement, one man was allegedly mistakenly deported due to his tattoos.
The prison he was sent to is notorious for housing Venezuelan gang members, as well as mass murderers, and is considered the largest prison in the Americas and can house up to 40,000 inmates.
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After the family of a man sent there spoke out about the error, the Trump administration acknowledged the mistake on their behalf, noting that Kilmar Abrego Carcia had legal status at the time he was deported to El Salvador.
Garcia entered the US illegally sometime around 2011, but a judge previously decided in 2019 that he should not be deported because he had been threatened by a gang in his native country.
A Supreme Court ruled that Trump's administration must 'facilitate' Garcia's return, but the judge in question claimed that she had heard nothing but silence in response to her judgement.
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This led to a push and pull situation between the US and the courts, which ultimately decided that he would be brought in under new shock charges against him.
Garcia has now been charged in federal court in Tennessee on Friday (June 6) with charges of conspiring to transport illegal immigrants into the US, according to attorney general Pam Bondi.
Court records show the filing was made on May 2, over two months after he was deported from the country.
Appearing in a court, Garcia will now be held in custody until next Friday before his arraignment and detention hearing.
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However, in light of this new development, his lawyers have called the charges against him ‘preposterous’.
Andrew Rossman said as per Sky: "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.”
According to the indictment, Garcia worked with approximately five other people who were working to smuggle immigrants into the US and transport them from the border to other areas of the nation.
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Bondi claimed during a news conference: "The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring.
"He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found - smuggling people throughout our country... MS-13 [international criminal gang] members, violent gang terrorist organisation members... throughout our country.
"He will be prosecuted in our country, sentenced in our country if convicted and then returned after completion of his sentence."
In a separate statement, she slammed the ‘Fake News Media’ and continued to repeat an unproven claim that the man was part of a gang, stating: "The Justice Department's Grand Jury Indictment against Abrego Garcia proves the unhinged Democrat Party was wrong, and their stenographers in the Fake News Media were once again played like fools.
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"Abrego Garcia was never an innocent 'Maryland Man'- Abrego Garcia is an illegal alien terrorist, gang member, and human trafficker who has spent his entire life abusing innocent people, especially women and the most vulnerable."