Kilmar Abrego Garcia released from Tennessee prison, will join the family in Maryland to wait for the trial

Friday, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released from prison in Tennessee so that he could join his family in Maryland while waiting for a trial for human smuggling.

The case of the national Salvadoran has become a flash point in the immigration program of American president Donald Trump after having been wrongly expelled in March. Faced with a court order, Trump administration brought him back to the United States in June to hold him for criminal charges.

Although Greo Garcia was considered eligible for provisional release, he had stayed in prison at the request of his lawyers, who feared that the republican administration could try to deport him immediately if he was released.

These fears were somewhat peaceful by a recent decision in a separate case in Maryland, which obliges immigration officials to authorize the time to Abrego Garcia to take up a challenge to any expulsion order.

Friday, Abrego Garcia came out of Putnam County prison with a white buttoned shirt with short sleeves and black pants, accompanied by the defense lawyer Rascoe Dean. They did not speak to journalists but went up in a white SUV and accessed at the height.

The liberation order of the Tennessee court obliges Abrego Garcia to go directly to Maryland, where he will be in detention at home with his brother appointed as a goalkeeper. He is required to submit to electronic surveillance and can only leave the house for work, religious services and other approved activities.

An Abrego Garcia lawyer in his expulsion case in Maryland, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said his client on Friday that his client had “gathered his loving family” for the first time since he was wrongly expelled towards a notorious priority of El Salvador in March.

“Although his release brings a certain relief, we all know that he is far from safe,” said Sandoval-Moshenberg.

“The detention or expulsion of ice to an unknown third country is still threatening to tear his family,” he added, referring to American immigration and the application of customs.

Meanwhile, internal security secretary Kristi Noem criticized the decision to release Abrego Garcia.

“The liberal judges of the activists tried to obstruct our police at each stage of the abolition of the worst of the worst criminals of our country,” Noem said in a statement.

She called upon ordering her liberation a “new bottom” by an “publicity judge from hungry Maryland”, apparently referring to the judge supervising her initial expulsion affair rather than the judge of Tennessee who ordered her release.

“We will not stop fighting until this Salvadoral man becomes justice and is out of our country,” said Noem.

Earlier this week, Abrego Garcia’s criminal lawyers filed a request asking the judge to reject the smuggling case, saying that he was prosecuted for punishing him for disputed his dismissal to Salvador.

On Friday, in a statement, the defense lawyer, Sean Hecker, described the accusations of “vindictive attack on a man who had the courage to retaliate against the continuous aggression of the administration against the rule of law”.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty of the charges of smuggling, which arise from a stop of traffic in 2022 in Tennessee for speeding. Images of body cameras from a Tennessee road patrol agent shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the police discussed their suspicions of smuggling among themselves. However, Abrego Garcia was authorized to continue driving with only a warning.

Look | The American senator met Abrego Garcia when he was still in Salvador:

The American senator wrongly meets Kilmar Abrego Garcia in Salvador

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen directly met a man from Maryland expelled in El Salvador, suspected of being in the violent gang MS-13. The Trump administration refuses to bring him back, despite the orders of the Federal Court.

An agent of the Ministry of Internal Security said that he had started to investigate traffic cessation in April, when the government was facing increasing pressure to return Abrego Garcia to the United States

Abrego Garcia has an American woman and children and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the United States illegally. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection against being expelled in El Salvador, where he faced a “well -founded fear” of violence, according to legal files. He had to register each year with immigration and customs application while Homeland Security issued him a work permit.

Although Greo Garcia cannot be expelled to El Salvador without violating the judge’s order, the internal security officials declared that they were planning to deport him to an unnamed third country.