The sudden return of Kilmar Abrego García to the United States on Friday to face federal smuggling positions throughout the country was a triumph of messages for the Trump administration.
The news diverted public attention from a series of decisions of the Unanimous Court, including a decision of the Supreme Court, that President Donald Trump did not have the power to stop and unilaterally deport people to foreign prisons without a review by a judge.
And the accusations against Abrego García are condemnatory. A Federal Grande discovered that the 29-year-old was a MS-13 member who transported thousands of undocumented immigrants, including children, from Texas to states from all over the country for profit for nine years. Supposedly he also transported firearms and drugs, abused migrants and was linked to an incident in Mexico where a tractor-river overturned and killed 50 migrants.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, a lawyer who represents Abrego-García, said on Saturday he planned to meet his client for the first time on Sunday, but refused to make more comments.
A former senior official of the law who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the fear of reprisals, said he was beaten by the large amount of resources that the Department of Justice put in the investigation of Abrego García.
“It is strange that they use all these people to chase a low -level driver,” said the official. “Usually, we used the driver to go after the coyotes and above if we could. But they really wanted to get this guy and it seems they found a path.”
In a telephone interview with Kristen Welker from NBC News on Saturday, Trump praised the accusation of Abrego García and predicted that it would be easy for federal prosecutors to condemn him. “I think it should be,” he said. “It should be.”
Multiple questions about Abrego García, the case against him and the political consequences remain unanswered.
Will Democrats pay a political price?
For months, Abrego García’s lawyers, his wife and some Democrats, have denied that he was a member of the MS-13 gang. In general, they portrayed him as a worker in the construction of Maryland and said he was transporting coworkers when a state soldier from Tennessee stopped him in the interest 40 on November 30, 2022.
The accusation paints a different image: Abrego García transported nine Hispanic males without identification or luggage in a Chevrolet suburban. Prosecutors claim that “knowingly and falsely” they told the soldier that “they had been in St. Louis for two weeks doing construction” and that they returned to Maryland.
However, the data of the registration reader showed that the suburbs had not been close to St. Louis for twelve months. Instead, it had been in Houston where, according to prosecutors, Abrego García had collected men. The vehicle did not carry construction tools or equipment, but its rear load area had been modified with makeshift seats to transport more passengers.
The apparent strength of the government’s case could rekindle the debate among Democrats about the risks of focusing on the case of Abrego García. For weeks, Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-Marryland and other Democrats emphasized that his criticisms pointed to Trump’s decision unilaterally to Abrego García without judicial supervision, not a defense of Abrego García himself.
When Welker asked about Van Hollen, President Trump mocked the senator and said that defending Abrego García would be counterproductive to the Democrats.
“It’s a loser. The guy is a loser,” Trump said, referring to Van Hollen. “They will lose for that. That is not what people want to listen. They are trying to defend a man who has a horrible record of abuse, abuse of women in particular.”
Van Hollen defended his position in a CNN interview. “You know, I will never apologize to defend the Constitution,” he said. “In fact, it is the Trump administration and all its cronies who should apologize to the country for going through this unnecessary situation.”
What happened within the Trump administration?
On a visit from the Oval office on April 15, 2025, Trump, the Attorney General Pam Bondi and other Trump administration officials stated that it was not possible for the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of the return of El Salvador de Abrego García as the Supreme Court had ordered.
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, made fun of a journalist for asking him if he would. “How can I return it to the United States? Bukele said, Sitting next to Trump in the Oval office. “Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is absurd.”
Trump, in turn, rebuked the journalists gathered, saying: “They would love that a criminal will free our country. These are sick people.”
Bondi said only El Salvador could decide whether to return to Bukele. “If you want to return it, we would facilitate it, which means to provide a plane,” Bondi said. “That is for El Salvador if they want to return it. That doesn’t depend on us.”
However, at a Friday press conference in the Department of Justice, Bondi described the return of Abrego García as soft and without problems. “We want to thank President Bukele for accepting Abrego García to the United States,” he said. “Our government presented El Salvador an arrest warrant, and agreed to return it to our country.”
When asked what had changed from the traffic stop in 2022, he praised Trump. “What has changed is that Donald Trump is now president of the United States,” said Bondi, “and our borders are again safe.”
In an unusual movement, Bondi also described the accusations against Abrego García that were not included in the accusation. She said the conspirators alleged that Abrego García “requested photographs of nudes and videos of a minor” and “played a role in the murder of the mother of a member of a rival gang.”
For decades, the general prosecutors of the state and local prosecutors generally accused the accused of crimes only for which a grand jury accused them. Discussing other potential crimes has been considered for a long time as an abuse of fiscal power, risking unfair damage to the reputation of the defendants.
A former official of the Superior Justice, who requested anonymity, citing reprisal fears, said Bondi often speaks as a partisan Trump’s loyal, not as an official of the neutral law.
“She says the president’s name every time,” said the former official of the Department of Justice. “She speaks more as a politician, disturbing a candidate than a general prosecutor who is speaking independently. You can see that in the words she uses.”
Why did a federal prosecutor resign in Tennessee?
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that people close to the matter said the accusation caused the resignation of a veteran career prosecutor who directed the criminal division in the office of the United States prosecutor where the case was presented. The Journal did not appoint the prosecutor.
However, days after Abrego García was accused by a federal grand jury in Nashville, Ben Schrader, head of the criminal division at the United States prosecutor’s office in Nashville, he resigned.
“Today early, after almost 15 years as an assistant to the United States prosecutor, I resigned as head of the criminal division at the United States Prosecutor’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee,” Schrader Published in LinkedIn. “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor of the Department of Justice, where the only description of the work I have known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. I wish all my colleagues from the office of the United States prosecutor in Nashville and throughout the department, the best thing they seek to do justice in the name of US people.”
When asked about Schrader’s resignation by NBC News, a spokesman for the Department of Justice said he does not comment on personnel changes. Schrader, contacted by NBC News by text message on his cell phone, sent a two -words response when asked why he had renounced: “No comments.”
