Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the deported El Salvadoran at the center of the Trump administration’s immigration battle with the courts, was stopped by police in an SUV owned by a man who was himself deported after pleading guilty to smuggling illegal aliens in 2020, according to court and Homeland Security Department intelligence documents reviewed by Just the News.
These new details follow Just the News reporting last week that Abrego Garcia was flagged in 2022 by the Biden administration as a “suspect alien” who was possibly involved in “human smuggling/trafficking” after a traffic stop in Tennessee raised the suspicions of a state trooper, according to internal Homeland Security documents.
The Trump administration alleges Abrego Garcia is a member of the notorious El Salvadoran gang MS-13 based on Maryland police identifications and deported him last month back to his home country.
Family and lawyers deny any connection to the gang and are fighting the deportation, arguing it violates a 2019 order that protected Abrego Garcia from being sent back to El Salvador. Meanwhile, a growing body of evidence suggests the illegal immigrant wasn’t the peaceful, law-abiding father “from Maryland,” as his wife and lawyers have claimed in the news media.
When Abrego Garcia was stopped in 2022 by the Tennessee state trooper, Homeland Security intelligence created a record of the encounter, Just the News reported. The El Salvadoran was driving a black 2001 Chevrolet Suburban and said he was transporting his passengers to Maryland from Texas for construction work, although the state trooper found no luggage in the SUV.
Homeland Security documents identified the owner of the vehicle as Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes. Abrego Garcia told the state trooper that the owner was his boss. However, that SUV was flagged separately by the Homeland Security Investigations Baltimore field office as belonging to a target they suspected of human trafficking or smuggling, the documents show.
“Vehicle is used by HSI Baltimore target in human smuggling/trafficking operation. Vehicle makes trips to southern border to pick up non-citizens,” the record reads. The memo says the Baltimore HSI case agent should be notified if the vehicle is encountered.
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