Image Credit: Michael M. Santiago / Staff / Getty Images 
A judge has ordered “Maryland Man” Kilmar Abrego Garcia to be released on bail pending his criminal trial on human-smuggling charges.
Saturday’s decision by Tennessee Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes does not necessarily mean Garcia will be allowed to return home to his family. Instead, he is likely to be placed in immigration detention, since he is an illegal immigrant.
Garcia was brought back to the US from El Salvador by the Department of Justice at the beginning of the month to face human-smuggling charges. Prosecutors claim Garcia made hundreds of trips from the US-Mexico border to deliver illegal aliens across the US.
Garcia is said to have worked “full time” as a people-smuggler, earning as much as $1500 per trip.
Two witnesses testified that smugglers would charge migrants from Central and South America as much as $8,000 for passage into the US. Once in the US, Garcia would transport them across the US to their destinations.
The allegations were shared during a pre-trial hearing in a Nashville court, at which Garcia entered a “not guilty” plea in relation to people-smuggling charges.
The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee.
Garcia was pulled over in a car with nine passengers. The vehicle Garcia was driving was owned by a convicted migrant smuggler, and six of the nine occupants were in the US illegally. Garcia had an envelope on his person containing $1400 in cash.
During the court hearing it was also alleged that Garcia was involved in gun and drug smuggling, and that he had sexual relationships with passengers, including a minor. Testimony about his sexual relationships was limited after an objection by his defense team.
Garcia became a cause célèbre for President Trump’s opponents after he was deported to El Salvador and detained in its notorious Center for Terrorist Confinement (CECOT) as a member of the violent gang MS-13, which Trump declared a foreign terrorist organization.
Garcia was detained by ICE in March and deported to El Salvador after President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act.
Democrats and leftist radicals claimed Garcia’s arrest was a case of mistaken identity and that he was a law-abiding family man, despite copious evidence to the contrary, including gang tattoos on his hands.
Garcia entered the US unlawfully in 2012 and was identified as a member of MS-13 when he was arrested by law enforcement in 2019. He was suspected of being involved in human trafficking.
In that same year, an immigration court determined that “the determination that the Respondent [Abrego Garcia] is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record, namely, information contained in the Gang Field Interview Sheet.”
However, Garcia was granted a deportation withholding order because it was feared his life would be in danger if he were deported back to El Salvador.
President Trump told NBC he thought it would be “a very easy case” against Garcia, who had a “horrible record of abuse” of women.
If convicted, he will face deportation after serving his sentence.
