The illegal immigrant and suspected MS-13 gang member deported to El Salvador whom Democrats have rallied behind allegedly was driving the car of a convicted human smuggler during a 2022 traffic stop on a Tennessee highway.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was stopped by a Tennessee state trooper for speeding and erratic driving. When an officer noticed the El Salvador national was with eight others and there was no luggage in their vehicle on their trip from Texas to Maryland, he suspected something was amiss, the New York Post reported Wednesday, citing a Department of Homeland Security memo it obtained last week.
Abrego Garcia, whose deportation last month by the Trump administration triggered a legal fight and outrage by Democrat lawmakers, claimed the SUV he was driving was owned by “his boss” at his construction job.
The person turned out to be Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, an illegal immigrant previously convicted of human smuggling, the Post reported. It is not known whether Hernandez Reyez ever employed Abrego Garcia in construction.
Hernandez Reyez was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2020 after pleading guilty to charges of smuggling illegal immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras, in a vehicle he was driving through Mississippi.
Even though the Tennessee trooper did not arrest Abrego Garcia or escalate the investigation, DHS noticed the traffic stop through its computer-aided dispatch report system, Just the News reported Tuesday. Agents determined he was a “suspect alien” and referred his matter for review to “passport control.”
Three weeks later, on Dec. 27, 2022, DHS updated its records to urge all personnel who encountered Abrego Garcia to “escort to secondary,” a term referring to investigative procedures used when someone suspected of wrongdoing is encountered at a port of entry or by Border Patrol agents.
Abrego Garcia also was previously accused of physically abusing his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen who asked a Maryland court to grant her a protective order against her husband in 2021 after he allegedly punched, scratched, grabbed and bruised her, the Post reported.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued their client has no criminal history to support his removal from the U.S., but Department of Justice documents released Wednesday regarding Abrego Garcia’s initial arrest in 2019 in Maryland that a “reliable source” advised them that Abrego Garcia “is an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique.”
DOJ attorneys said they’re complying with the court orders by removing any obstacles that would prevent Abrego Garcia from returning to the U.S., but that they can’t force the Salvadoran government to send him back.
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