Abrego Garcia is pulled into two directions on the political aisle as the Left has claimed his innocence while the Right sees him as a gang member who needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Only now, as he returned to the U.S. last week, have the depths of his alleged crimes come to light. That’s when Garcia was indicted for human trafficking.
Ken Blackwell, who is a senior fellow for human rights and constitutional governance at Family Research Council, commented on the recent events regarding Abrego Garcia on Washington Watch with Joseph Backholm.
“I'm so delighted that Garcia is coming to stand in the dock before the American people. He's a bad guy, and I think the American people need to feel the full embrace of justice being brought to him for the horrible crimes that he has committed,” Blackwell said.
Garcia was deported on March 15, even though he obtained a court order in 2019 that was supposed to bar his deportation on the grounds that he would be persecuted if he returned to El Salvador. After being deported, Garcia was kept in the country’s CECOT mega-prison.
Just a contractor?
Garcia's family claims that he is only a contractor, not a member of the MS-13 gang. Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Garcia's wife, filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Judge in Maryland to bring him back to the states, which was further affirmed by the Supreme Court.
While the Trump administration admitted to their mistake in deporting Garcia, they fought against the order to return him, claiming him as a MS-13 member. The U.S. only returned Garcia -- shown at top meeting in El Salvador with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland -- after presenting an arrest warrant to the president of El Salvador.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche gave insight into whether Garcia's return, under criminal charges, aligns with the goals of the Maryland lawsuit.
“There's a big difference between what the state of play was before the indictment and after the indictment,” Blanche says.
Blache goes on to explain that he was returned because of the arrest warrant that was presented to the government of El Salvador, leaving those to wonder if that makes the Maryland litigation useless.
A grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee on May 21 returned a sealed indictment charging Garcia with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling.
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring. They found this was his full-time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women,” says U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, shown at right.
Last Friday Garcia made his initial court appearance in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holms, who set his hearing to take place on June 13.
If Garcia is convicted, he would be granted the maximum punishment, which is imprisonment for 10 years per alien he transported.
Defense attorney: They’re out to get him
Throughout this ordeal, Garcia's attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, is staunch in proclaiming his client as an innocent victim.
“They'll stop at nothing at all -- even some of the most preposterous charges imaginable -- just to avoid admitting that they made a mistake, which is what everyone knows happened in this case,” Sandoval-Moshenberg says.
Garcia is noted to have not been charged with anything previously; however, he did have a run in with the police that has been heavenly scrutinized ever since the encounter occurred.
In 2022, Garcia was pulled over by Tennessee Highway Patrol in a vehicle that was carrying eight passengers, claiming that they were working on a construction site in Missouri. However, the cops were suspicious since none of the occupants carried any luggage with them. While they suspected that Garcia was transporting humans, they let him off with a warning regarding Garcia's out-of-date driver’s license.
