Standing in front of the microphones on April 18, flanked by the friends and family of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Democratic Senator Chris van Hollen declared that is ‘time to bring him home.’
Van Hollen had just returned from El Salvador where he overcame government opposition to meet with Abrego Garcia, 29, who was being held in the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison, since his deportation from the United States in March.
The Maryland senator described how a tear ran down Abrego Garcia’s cheek as the Salvadoran illegal immigrant – and resident of Maryland – lamented missing his wife and children.
Mainstream media reporting has described Abrego Garcia in similar terms, as a ‘Maryland dad’ and a ‘father who had lived in Maryland for 13 years.’
That’s not how the Turmp administration tends to describe him.
Trump administration border czar Tom Homan has called Abrego Garcia, ‘an MS-13 gang member, public safety threat, [and] terrorist.’
And, indeed, the new reporting and court documents seen by the Daily Mail closely linking Abrego Garcia to a convicted human trafficker paints a far dark portrait of the man than has been portrayed by others.
Chris Van Hollen (right) had just returned from El Salvador where he overcame government opposition to meet with Abrego Garcia (left) who was being held in the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo prison, since his deportation from the United States in March.
Suspected human trafficker
Staring nervously into a Tennessee police trooper’s body camera in 2022, Abrego Garcia tried to explain exactly why he had eight other people crammed into his SUV.
He said he had been driving construction workers between jobs for the last three days, starting in Houston, Texas with their final destination being Temple Hills, Maryland, 1,400 miles away.
But the Tennessee highway patrol officer became suspicious when Abrego Garcia allegedly tried to put him ‘off track’ by responding to questions with questions and pretending he couldn’t speak English very well.
According to a police report, there was no luggage in the black Chevrolet Suburban and all of the men gave Abrego Garcia’s home address as their address as well.
Abrego Garcia was driving with an expired temporary license and he told the state trooper that the SUV belonged to his boss, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes.
So concerned was the trooper that he suspected Abrego Garcia involved in human trafficking and arrested the nine men.
But – due to guidance form the Biden administration’s FBI –Abrego Garcia was released with a warning for driving without a valid license.
Now, court and Homeland Security Department intelligence documents seen by Just The News are reportedly revealing more about that stop and Abrego Garcia’s ‘boss’ – a fellow Salvadoran illegal immigrant and convicted human smuggler.
On December 2, 2019, a special agent of the Department of Homeland Security stopped a suspicious white Dodge Caravan minivan with New Mexico plates on a stretch of interstate I-10 in Gautier, Mississippi.
Inside the agent found nine illegal migrant men.
In the passenger seat was sat Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes – the man that Abergo Garcia reportedly named as his ‘boss.’
In August 2020, Hernandez Reyes plead guilty to four counts of ‘aiding and abetting the illegal transportation of an alien within the United States’ and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.
He said he had been living in Maryland, where Abrego Garcia lives, before moving to Houston, Texas, a city Abrego Garcia had reportedly said he was thinking about relocating to.
A Daily Mail analysis of the publicly available evidence is raising even deeper questions about Abrego Garcia’s past and the narrative that his defenders have spun.
court and Homeland Security Department intelligence documents seen by Just The News are reportedly revealing more about that stop and Abrego Garcia’s ‘boss’ – a fellow Salvadoran illegal immigrant and convicted human smuggler. (Pictured: Kilmar Abrego Garcia).
Early life in San Salvador
Abrego Garcia’s story starts in the Los Nogales neighborhood of San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital where he lived with his mother, Cecilia, and the rest of his family.
Abrego Garcia would later testify that his job was to go to the grocery store and buy the supplies for the family’s pupusa business, which they ran from their home.
Court documents reveal Abrego Garcia’s claim that Barrio 18, a local gang, used him as a ‘pawn’ to extort his mother by demanding the money from the business or they would hurt him and his brother.
The family allegedly became so concerned that they sent Abrego Garcia’s brother Cesar to the US, where he lives today, owning a home and construction business in rural Maryland.
Soon, Kilmar followed his brother as the threats allegedly continued. And at 16-years-old, Abrego Garcia illegally crossed into the US and joined his brother in Maryland.
For the next eight years, he appears to have lived and worked in the US. By the time of his deportation, he was a first-year sheet metal apprentice and found other employment as an HVAC installer.
In 2016 he met his future wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a US citizen who works in a dentist’s office, and they had three children together, 10, nine and four, two of whom have been diagnosed with autism, while the third has seizures.
But the first to raise concerns about Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang ties was Edwin Ramos, the father of two of her Vasquez’s children, who told a court she was dating a ‘gang member’
The family allegedly became so concerned that they sent Abrego Garcia’s brother Cesar (pictured) to the US, where he lives today, owning a home and construction business in rural Maryland.
In 2016 he met his future wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a US citizen who works in a dentist’s office, and they had three children together, 10, nine and four, two of whom have been diagnosed with autism, while the third has seizures.
Alleged gang ties
Ramos filed for an emergency custody hearing and alleged that his children were in danger, but a judge disagreed it was an emergency and in early 2019 the case was dismissed for a lack of jurisdiction.
Then in March of that year, Abrego Garcia was arrested in an incident which would sow the seeds for his 2025 deportation by the Trump administration.
Abrego Garcia was standing around with three known MS-13 gang members outside a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland.
His wife has claimed that he was looking for work, but he was arrested, nonetheless.
One of the MS-13 members was known as ‘Bimbo’ and had previous arrests for assault, burglary and concealing a dangerous weapon according to the document, called a ‘Gang Field Interview Sheet’.
At the time Abrego Garcia was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat which the police said was ‘indicative of Hispanic gang culture’ and showed he was a member in ‘good standing’ with MS-13. The clothing allegedly represented ‘see no evil, hear no evil’, a gang motto.
According to the document, a detective spoke with a ‘past and proven reliable source’ who advised that Abrego Garcia was an ‘active member of MS-13’ with a clique known as the Westerns and had the rank of ‘Chequeo’ and the moniker ‘Chele’.
The document suggested that Abrego Garcia and another man had previously been ‘detained in connection with a murder investigation.’ Abrego Garcia’s lawyer has said he wasn’t ever charged with murder.
In April 2019, a month later, a federal judge in Baltimore denied Abrego Garcia a bond and said that she found the claims about him being a gang member persuasive.
Judge Elizabeth Kesller wrote: ‘The fact that a ‘past, proven, and reliable source of information’ verified the respondent’s gang membership, rank, and gang name is sufficient to support that the respondent is a gang member, and the Respondent has failed to present evidence to rebut that assertion’.
While Abrego Garcia was still detained he married Vasquez. In court documents she later said that the wedding might be their ‘only chance’ to get married even though it was ‘far from how we ever imagined it’.
Then Abrego Garcia’s fortunes changed dramatically.
The first to raise concerns about Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang ties was Edwin Ramos, the father of two of her Vasquez’s children, who told a court she was dating a ‘gang member’. (Pictured: Abrego Garcia’s MS-13 tattoos).
Deportation halted
In October 2019, a different judge, who heard two days of testimony including from Abrego Garcia and his wife freed him and allowed him to stay in the US indefinitely.
While Baltimore federal judge David M. Jones did not dismiss the alleged that he was an MS-13 member, he said that he was persuaded that Abrego Garcia would be persecuted if he returned to El Salvador.
He granted Abrego Garcia ‘withholding of removal’, a status which is at the discretion of a judge and has a higher burden of proof than asylum applications.
Judge Jones said Abrego Garcia provided ‘credible’ responses to the questions and his testimony was ‘internally consistent…and appeared free of embellishment’.
Abrego Garcia also provided ‘substantial documentation’ for his claims including affidavits from family members, the judge concluded, adding that the Barrio 18 gang threatened Abrego Garcia’s life more than once.
Todd Bensman, a Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, which is based in Washington, told the Daily Mail that the judge ‘cut this guy a break’.
‘To me it’s sketchy he would agree to that,’ said Bensman. ‘Very often there’s no evidence of these claims, they just take them at their word. It’s one of the great weaknesses of our immigration system.
‘I can’t tell you how many immigration court proceedings where the government’s lawyer offers nothing at all. Their caseloads are insane. Nobody is going to be able to go to El Savador and interview the witnesses, the mother, neighbors, local police, nobody is doing those investigations to be a proper adversary,’ he continued. ‘These things often fall to: does the judge get a good gut feeling about the claim or not?’
The ruling itself suggests that is what happened, and the judge noted that ‘DHS (Homeland Security) has failed to carry their burden to show there are changes circumstances that would result in the respondent’s life not being threatened’
Bensman also cast doubt on the idea that Abrego Garcia may still be facing threats back home eight years after he arrived in America. Abrego Garcia’s mother Cecilia, who was supposedly being threatened by the Barrio 18 gang, is now living in Maryland.
Bensman said: ‘Even if it was true when he was being threatened, the conditions would have very substantially changed almost a decade later.
‘I call b******* on the story. I haven’t seen anything made public that would constitute evidence that he was in danger of being sent back, especially now because the government of El Salvador has cleaned everything up’.
Regardless, Abrego Garcia was allowed to continue living in the US in 2019, but he wasn’t done with the courts.
Domestic abuse claims
While Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have insisted he has never been convicted of a crime and has no criminal record, in May 2021 his wife got a restraining order against him and claimed he repeatedly beat her.
Vasquez wrote in one document: ‘At this point, I am afraid to be close to him. I have multiple photos/videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he (has) left me’.
In a statement released after the allegations were made public, Vasquez said she had sought the restraining order ‘out of caution’ because of her previous experience with domestic violence.
She said: ‘Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling. Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed’.
But the most damning evidence against Abrego Garcia was yet to come.
Vasquez wrote in one document: ‘At this point, I am afraid to be close to him. I have multiple photos/videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he (has) left me’. (Pictured: A post from Vasquez’s social media of her and Abrego Garcia).
In a statement released after the allegations were made public, Vasquez (pictured on April 4, 2025) said she had sought the restraining order ‘out of caution’ because of her previous experience with domestic violence.
Human trafficking
As first uncovered by the Tennessee Star, a conservative news and commentary website, Abrego Garcia was pulled over on the I-40 in Putnam County, Tennessee, for speeding and straying out of his lane.
The Combined Intelligence Unit report said that on December 1, 2022 an officer noticed eight other people were in the vehicle: Abrego Garcia claimed he had begun his journey eight days ago in Houston, Texas, and was going to Temple Hills, Maryland, via St Louis, Missouri.
The men in the car were construction workers and he was driving them around for his boss, Abrego Garcia said.
But red flags began appearing when the officer noticed there was no luggage in the vehicle and all the passengers gave the same home address matching Abrego Garcia’s.
The report states: ‘During the interview, subject (Abrego Garcia) pretended to speak less English than he was capable of and attempted to put the officer off-track by responding to questions with questions.’
Incredibly, Abrego Garcia was let off with a warning for driving without a valid license.
Michael Patrick Leahy, the editor of the Tennessee Star, said the fact Abrego Garcia was released was ‘beyond weird’.
He revealed that the traffic stop went on for an hour and 45 minutes – an extraordinary amount of time – while Abrego Garcia’s details were sent to federal law enforcement authorities who came back and asked the officer to take photos of the driver and all the vehicle occupants.
But after that information had been sent, the order came back to let them all go.
Leahy said: ‘The Tennessee Highway Patrol told us that the Biden era FBI instructed them to let Garcia go. That was highly suspect to us.’
According to Leahy, Abrego Garcia’s story didn’t stack up because he claimed to have stopped in St Louis, Missouri, but to get to Maryland from there it would be a straight drive East.
Instead, he was stopped in Tennessee, which would have been a five-hour detour South.
Another inconsistency was that Abrego Garcia said he had been driving for three days yet it’s only 900 miles, or a 12-hour drive. St Louis to Putnam County in Tennessee was another 400 miles, or five hours.
Houston, where Abrego Garcia claimed to have started his journey, is a known human trafficking hub.
Leahy said: ‘When we talked to law enforcement officers – we talked to several – they all said the proper course of action would be to take the driver in and find some place for the eight individuals in the vehicle to be held and questioned by ICE. That didn’t happen’.
Vasquez later claimed that her husband ‘worked in construction and sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites’. She said it was ‘entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with others in the vehicle’.
But Todd Bensman told the Daily Mail that the report from Tennessee was ‘game changing’ and that, based on his years of experience in the immigration system, said it was likely a ‘smuggling event’.
‘That means he very likely was involved in the business of smuggling even after his immigration court hearing when he’s claiming I’m not in MS-13,’ Bensman said. ‘You cannot do smuggling in this country unless you’re dealing with criminal elements.’
Abrego Garcia’s current deportation saga began when he was pulled over by immigration officers on March 12, 2025 and was told his immigration status had changed.
Within days he was on a plane to El Salvador and his family recognized him in CECOT from media images which showed off distinctive tattoos on his arm.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .