When El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele visited the White House, he and Trump seemed to be treating the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, who had been wrongly deported by Trump to that country and was being held in a controversial mega-prison, as a joke. Trump coyly said that there was nothing he could do since Ábrego García was now under the jurisdiction of Bukele, and Bukele in turn said that he would not be released, despite demands from a US federal judge that he be returned. Then suddenly today, Ábrego García was brought back.

But that is not the end of his ordeal. The attorney general Pam Bondi has said that he faces criminal charges here.

In a press briefing on Friday, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that a federal grand jury in Tennessee had indicted the 29-year-old father on counts of illegally smuggling undocumented people as well as of conspiracy to commit that crime.
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In a statement to the Hill on Friday, Ábrego García’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg accused the Trump administration of having “disappeared” his client “to a foreign prison in violation of a court order”.

“Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him,” he added.

Sandoval-Moshenberg also said: “This shows that they were playing games with the court all along. Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished – not after.”

Sandoval-Moshenberg said the White House’s treatment of his client was “an abuse of power, not justice”. He called on Ábrego García to face the same immigration judge who had previously granted him a federal protection order against deportation to El Salvador “to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent” there.
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Ábrego García also had no criminal record in the US before the indictment announced on Friday, according to court documents.

It is clear that Trump wanted to avoid getting slapped down again by the courts and thus resorted to this attempt at saving face. The indictment has all the earmarks of having been put together so that Trump can argue that Abrego Garcia is a criminal who should be deported.

Mistakenly deported Salvadoran native Kilmar Abrego Garcia appeared in a Tennessee courtroom Friday, hours after he was brought back to the United States to face criminal charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S.

More than two months after the Trump administration admitted it mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia from Maryland to his native El Salvador, a federal grand jury has indicted him for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the United States.

A two-count indictment, which was filed under seal in federal court in Tennessee last month and unsealed Friday, alleges Abrego Garcia, 29, participated in a yearslong conspiracy to haul undocumented migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.
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The alleged conspiracy spanned nearly a decade and involved the domestic transport of thousands of noncitizens from Mexico and Central America, including some children, in exchange for thousands of dollars, according to the indictment.

Abrego Garcia is alleged to have participated in more than 100 such trips, according to the indictment. Among those allegedly transported were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, sources familiar with the investigation said.

Abrego Garcia is the only member of the alleged conspiracy charged in the indictment.
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The decision to pursue the indictment against Abrego Garcia led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, sources briefed on Schrader’s decision told ABC News. Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons, the sources said.

Schrader, who spent 15 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and was most recently the chief of the criminal division, declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.

Notice that while Abrego Garcia is said to be part of a big conspiracy involving the transport of large numbers of people and involving over 100 trips to do it, he is the only person in the alleged conspiracy to be charged.

This development follows, again on the orders of a judge, the return of a Guatemalan who had been deported to Mexico..

US District Judge Brian Murphy – who is overseeing a case concerning migrants being deported to countries that are not their home country – ordered O.C.G’s return last month, ruling that his removal to Mexico, and subsequently Guatemala, likely “lacked due process.”
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He has claimed that he had not been given the opportunity before his deportation to communicate his fear of being sent to Mexico and that his pleas before his removal to speak to an attorney were rejected.

The government had initially argued that O.C.G. had communicated to officials before his removal that he had no fear about being deported to Mexico, but it recently backed down from that claim after it could not identify an immigration official who could substantiate it.

According to Murphy’s ruling, O.C.G. said during his immigration proceedings that he feared being sent to Mexico, but the judge told him that since Mexico isn’t his native country, he can’t be sent there without additional steps in the process.

Murphy’s ruling came days after an appeals court denied the Trump administration’s request to put on hold an order requiring it to facilitate the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant wrongly deported to El Salvador earlier this year.

During a hearing last month, US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher said officials had done virtually nothing to comply with her directive that they “facilitate” that migrant’s return to the US from the mega-prison in El Salvador where he was sent so he can have his asylum application resolved.

It looks like it has sunk in to the lawless Trump gang that they are going to keep losing in the courts if they keep violating people’s due process rights and summarily deporting them.