The Trump administration had not yet brought Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from prison in El Salvador June 6 when a federal grand jury in Tennessee indicted him on charges of taking part for years in a conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the United States. The sealed indictment was waiting in Nashville when Abrego got back to the U.S.
Abrego, who has lived almost half his 29 years in Maryland, has no previous criminal arrests or convictions. The government’s star witness against him, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, has been convicted of three felonies, deported multiple times, and was about to be deported again before the Justice Department began putting this case together. Now he’s in a halfway house, with prospects of staying in the U.S. at least a year and getting a work permit.
To find out more we talk with reporter Maria Sacchetti, who covers immigration, Homeland Security, ICE and immigration courts for The Washington Post. She wrote about the witness and is following the case.
