Feds ask to keep Kilmar Abrego Garcia in jail pending trial

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Editor's Note: This story has been updated with Kilmar Abrego Garcia's full last name.

Justice Department lawyers contend Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant mistakenly deported to his home country and now returned to face criminal charges, should remain jailed while the case is argued.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Tennessee scheduled a detention hearing to consider the question on June 13.

Abrego Garcia is charged with conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants and unlawful transportation for financial gain. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for each person transported, and the indictment unsealed last week charged him with driving a van with nine other people in it.

Acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire argued in a filing June 9 that one of the immigrants transported in the conspiracy was a minor, which would justify detention. Abrego Garcia “is a serious risk” to flee or to threaten, injure or intimidate witnesses in the case, McGuire argued.

“It is not simply that he would face serious prison time,” McGuire said in the filing. “It is that, if convicted, he would likely lose forever the opportunity to remain lawfully in the United States.”

“This motivation is substantially different from a citizen defendant who, while he may face prison time, does not face that permanent expulsion from a country where his family currently resides,” McGuire said.

Abrego Garcia was among hundreds of immigrants deported March 15 to a notorious Salvadoran prison as an alleged gang member, in his case MS-13.

Immigration officials acknowledged an “administrative error” in removing him despite a court order preventing his deportation while he sought asylum in the United States.

Abrego Garcia has denied being a member of MS-13. His lawyers have said he needs to meet with his Maryland family and lawyers to mount his defense, but that he has not gotten a fair trial in the court of public opinion.