(NewsNation) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadorian national from Maryland who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, will face trial on federal smuggling charges before he can be deported to a country other than his home one, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
The announcement came after federal prosecutors told a U.S. district judge in Maryland they planned to begin proceedings to remove Abrego Garcia from the United States and deport him to a country other than his home country when he is released from federal custody.
But a Department of Justice spokesman told the Associated Press on Thursday afternoon that the government will try Abrego Garcia before moving for his removal from the United States.
“This defendant has been charged with horrific crimes, including trafficking children, and will not walk free in our country again,” the spokesman, Chad Gilmartin, told the AP.
The government’s declaration came a day after Abrego Garcia appeared in federal court in Nashville. Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States from El Salvador this month to face federal human smuggling charges and remains in jail in Tennessee after Wednesday’s hearing, which was to have outlined to conditions of his release.
Attorneys representing Abrego Garcia, the 29-year-old construction worker, were already bracing for the possibility that their client could be taken into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement upon being released.
They asked U.S. Magistrate Barbara Holmes on Wednesday if Abrego Garcia was detained by ICE or the Department of Homeland Security, whether he would be held in a facility where they could have access to him as he awaits trial on the Tennessee charges. Holmes responded that she did not have the authority to determine where he was held as he awaited trial.
On Thursday, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked specifically if their client could be returned to Maryland, where he had been living with his family, when he was deported to El Salvador due to an administrative error. By doing so, they said, it would be more difficult for the government to deport him.
Holmes had given Abrego Garcia’s attorneys until Thursday to file a motion after Wednesday’s hearing in which Holmes laid out the conditions of his release. However, she again warned that those conditions would only apply if Abrego Garcia was not taken into ICE custody.
Prosecutors told the judge on Thursday, however, that they would comply with all court orders and said that their plans to begin removal proceedings against Abrego Garcia were not imminent, The Associated Press reported.
Holmes ruled Sunday that Abrego Garcia does not represent a flight risk or a threat to the community and therefore, had the right to be released from custody while awaiting trial. However, following Wednesday’s nearly two-hour hearing in Nashville, she ruled that Abrego Garcia should remain in jail amid expectations that ICE would detain him and move to have him deported.
In their request to U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote that “if this court does not act swiftly,” the government “is likely to whisk Abrego Garcia away to some place far from Maryland,” the AP reported.
One of Abrego Garcia’s immigration attorneys did not immediately return a request from NewsNation seeking comment Thursday.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the smuggling charges, which stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. Abrego Garcia entered the United States illegally in 2013 and was given a protective order in 2019 by an immigration judge, which kept him from being deported to El Salvador amid threats from a gang in his home country.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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