Judge Rules Abrego Garcia Released Pending Federal Trial and ICE Menaces Him With Deportation Before Trial

Federal Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ordered that Kilmar Abrego Garcia be released while awaiting trial in Nashville, Tennessee on a federal charge of human trafficking, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement loomed ready to take him into immigration custody again as soon as he is released.

Acting U.S. Attorney Rob McGuire immediately filed notice of appeal appeal against Holmes’ ruling and asked her to stay her ruling until the Court of Appeals responds. Holmes refused the request.

Abrego Garcia, as he is referred to in government documents, told the court he prefers to use Abrego as his surname.

Abrego was unlawfully renditioned without due process to the CECOT prison in El Salvador against an immigration judge’s order that he must never be sent back to that country. Challenges went all the way up to the Supreme Court, consistently getting rulings that the federal government must retrieve him and allow due process.

Before bringing him back to the USA, the federal government searched his background and dug up a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding while driving a van with nine passengers. The Tennessee Highway Patrol only gave him a warning. warning, but the federal government transformed the incident into a human trafficking charge.

Holmes wrote:

[D]ue process demands that every person charged with a federal crime be afforded a presumption of innocence unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and that deprivation of an individual’s liberty prior to trial can occur only in carefully limited circumstances with all the procedural safeguards afforded by the Bail Reform Act. 

Abrego, like every person arrested on federal criminal charges, is entitled to a full and fair determination of whether he must remain in federal custody pending trial. The Court will give Abrego the due process that he is guaranteed.

and in regard to whether he might flee before trial, she wrote

The Court finds nothing in Abrego’s history to suggest that he is a flight risk. … There is no allegation, much less evidence, that he has intentionally failed to appear in court in the past. Overall, the government simply has not shown a serious risk that Abrego will intentionally avoid appearing as required.

Holmes was unimpressed by the government’s case, finding it inconsistent, reliant on hearsay, requiring Abrego to have superhuman capabilities to carry out what he is accused of, and generally unreliable. She scheduled a 25 June court date at 14:00 local time regarding conditions for Abrego’s release.

She acknowledged that Abrego will probably be detained by ICE as soon as he is released from criminal custody. ICE may try to deport him again, this time to a country other than the forbidden El Salvador. But he can request release on bond from an immigration judge.

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