Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man arrested by the government and sent to an El Salvador prison in error and then returned to the United States last week, argue in a court filing Wednesday that he man should be freed from jail pending trial.
“Mr. Abrego Garcia asks the Court for what he has been denied the past several months — due process,” attorneys for Abrego Garcia wrote in a memorandum opposing prosecutor’s efforts to keep him detained.
Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on Friday to face federal charges that he was involved in a scheme to transport people in the United States who are not legally able to be in the country. He was in federal custody Wednesday night.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued in Wednesday’s memo that he is not a flight risk, as prosecutors have argued. His attorneys say legal standards to keep him detained have not been met.
“The government isn’t even entitled to a detention hearing in this case — much less detention. Mr. Abrego Garcia should be released,” his attorneys wrote.
An arraignment and detention hearing is scheduled for Friday in Tennessee.
Abrego Garcia, 29, was arrested in Maryland on March 12, and the Department of Homeland Security claimed he was a member of the gang MS-13, which he denied.
The government then deported him Abrego Garcia to El Salvador where he was imprisoned in the Center for Terrorism Confinement — despite an immigration judge’s previous order that he not be sent to El Salvador.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States, which administration officials resisted.
The Trump administration then asked El Salvador to return Abrego Garcia to the United States last week to face human smuggling charges filed in Tennessee.
The case became a high-profile battle over whether the Trump administration was bound to return Abrego Garcia under the federal judge’s order. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said at the White House in April that he would not return Abrego Garcia.
The matter went to the Supreme Court, which disputed the language of “effectuate” in the judge’s order but ruled that the Trump administration was required to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.
The two-count federal indictment unsealed in Tennessee charges Abrego Garcia with one count each of conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.
The indictment alleges that from about 2016 to 2025, he and others conspired to bring migrants illegally to the United States from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and elsewhere, through Mexico and across the Texas-Mexico border.
Abrego Garcia and a co-conspirator “ordinarily picked up the undocumented aliens in Houston, Texas area” after they had crossed the border, the indictment alleges.
The pair then would transport “the undocumented aliens from Texas to other parts of the United States to further the aliens’ unlawful presence in the United States,” the indictment says.
Chris Newman, an attorney who represents Abrego Garcia’s family, said last week that the Trump administration for months engaged in “a campaign of disinformation, defamation against Kilmar and his family.”
