mistakenly

A Salvadoran national whose mistaken deportation spurred national outcry in the United States will remain in jail for now, as lawyers discuss how to prevent him from being removed from the country a second time.

On Wednesday, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was set to be released from pre-trial custody without having to post bail. He is being held in detention in Nashville, Tennessee, on criminal charges of human smuggling.

The administration of President Donald Trump had sought to stop his release, deeming him to be a flight risk.

But US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw upheld a magistrate judge’s earlier decision finding that Abrego Garcia was eligible to walk free.

However, in an unexpected twist, lawyers on both sides argued that, if Abrego Garcia were released, he risks being taken into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for a second deportation.

That would deprive Abrego Garcia of the chance to defend himself against the charges, which he has denied. And lawyers for the government argued that it would also scuttle their criminal case against him.

Judge Crenshaw noted in a written decision that, since it is the government’s choice whether or not to deport Abrego Garcia, the situation appeared to be a case of the executive branch doing “injury on itself”.

“If deported, the Government argues, the Department of Justice will be deprived of the opportunity to pursue its criminal charges against Abrego,” Crenshaw wrote.

But, he added, “it is the Executive Branch’s decision that places the Government in this predicament.”

Ultimately, it was decided that Abrego Garcia would remain in custody while lawyers sparred over whether they could prevent Abrego Garcia’s deportation if he were released to await trial.

A high-profile case

Abrego Garcia appeared at the Wednesday hearing wearing an orange jail-issued T-shirt and a headset to listen to the proceedings through a Spanish interpreter.

It was the latest chapter in an ongoing fight between Abrego Garcia and the Trump administration over whether he would be allowed to stay in the US.

According to his lawyers, Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador as a teenager to avoid gang violence, arriving in the US around 2011. He has lived for more than a decade in Maryland, where he and his American wife are raising three children.

In 2019, a judge granted him a protection order that barred his removal from the US.

But on March 15, Abrego Garcia was swept up in the immigration raids being conducted as part of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

He and more than 200 other Venezuelans and Salvadorans were accused of being gang members, and they were deported to El Salvador.

Many of the men were sent to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a maximum-security prison for those accused of terrorism. But advocates for the deported immigrants have argued that many of their clients had no criminal records and were in the process of seeking legal immigration status in the US.

Advocates have also pointed out that ICE has provided scant evidence against some of the deported individuals, in some cases appearing to arrest people based solely on their tattoos.

The Trump administration, however, has designated Latin American gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as “foreign terrorist organisations” and sought to crack down on their presence in the US.

A number of legal challenges followed the deportation flights to El Salvador. In Abrego Garcia’s case, the government acknowledged that his removal had been the result of an “administrative error”.

But the Trump administration initially insisted he could not be brought back to the US even after the Supreme Court in April ordered the government to “facilitate” his return.

A return to the US

That changed on June 7, when Abrego Garcia was returned to the US. The Trump administration justified the return as necessary to confront him with charges of smuggling undocumented migrants inside the US.

Those charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee. In a video recording of the stop, one of the police officers observed that Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers and speculated he might be a smuggler. But no criminal charges were brought at the time.

In announcing Abrego Garcia’s return to the US this month, the Trump administration revealed it had sought a criminal indictment in May of this year.

At the recent detention hearings, Homeland Security special agent Peter Joseph testified that he did not begin investigating Abrego Garcia until April.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty to the smuggling charges on June 13, and his lawyers have characterised them as an attempt to justify his mistaken deportation.

On Sunday, US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ruled that Abrego Garcia does not have to remain in jail before his criminal trial.

But she described that decision as “little more than an academic exercise”, given that it was likely Abrego Garcia would be taken back into custody by ICE if released.

How to prevent Abrego Garcia from being deported a second time became the focus of Wednesday’s hearing.

A lawyer for Abrego Garcia, Sean Hecker, noted that witnesses cooperating with the Trump administration had been protected from possible deportation.

“The government has ensured witness cooperation by ensuring that people will not be deported,” Hecker said.

If the government could protect those witnesses from removal, Hecker asked why it could not do the same for Abrego Garcia.

Representing the government’s case, meanwhile, was acting US Attorney Rob McGuire. He argued that the executive branch of the government was vast, and he had little control over every entity’s actions.

Still, he added, he would ask the Department of Homeland Security for its cooperation in not deporting Abrego Garcia.

“That’s a separate agency with separate leadership and separate directions,” McGuire said. “I will coordinate, but I can’t tell them what to do.”

Speaking at a news conference before the court hearing, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, noted that it had been 106 days since her husband had been “abducted” by the government. She called for his safe return.

“Kilmar should never have been taken away from us,” she said. “This fight has been the hardest thing in my life.”

Members of a British Airways cabin crew team found themselves in a mortifying situation after being accidentally being checked into a sex hotel, complete with an anatomically detailed tub

Crew members aboard a British Airways flight endured a seriously awkward night, after a booking blunder saw them being checked into a sex dungeon.

While in the stylish Italian city of Milan, it had been decided that the colleagues would spend the night at the Motel Mo.om, a popular modern hotel with good transport links.

Unfortunately, in what has been described as a “comical mistake”, the team reportedly found themselves bedding down for the night at the similarly named Mo. om Hotel. Although at a glance, the names of these hotels appear almost indistinguishable, this is where any comparisons end.

It soon became clear to the crew that this was no ordinary establishment, as they took in the bondage-themed beds and vagina-shaped spa tub. And if these features didn’t drive the point home, the incessant “moaning and groaning” from fellow patrons certainly did.

READ MORE: British Airways ex-flight attendant says ‘I’m not safe to fly’ after sneaking drugs onto plane

A source told The Sun: “Crew were booked into a pay-by-the-hour sex hotel last Thursday. They were confronted with bondage sets, mirrored ceilings, human dog cages and leather harnesses. It was obvious that this wasn’t the place the crew was supposed to stay.”

Although there are humorous elements to the mishap, this sleeping situation was decidedly less than ideal for airline staff, for whom adequate rest is imperative.

As the source explained: “It was a comical mistake by the hotel booking team, but had serious implications. Some of the team who stayed in the sex dungeon didn’t get any sleep, so they couldn’t operate on BA services the following day. They were kept awake by thrill seekers moaning and groaning all day and night.”

As well as struggling through “constant noise” as a “24 hour orgy” raged on, employees allegedly also had to deal with witnessing “suspicious fluids in their rooms which made their skin crawl”.

A British Airways spokesperson told the Mirror: “A small number of crew were moved to unapproved hotel rooms following availability issues with our usual accommodation provider. This happened without our knowledge, and we’re urgently investigating to prevent it from taking place again.”

It’s understood that 12 crew members spent one evening in the unapproved accommodation, due to availability issues with the airline’s usual provider.

There was also thankfully no delay to the flight that the staff members had been scheduled to operate, meaning they were able to get back to normal after their unexpected stay.

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June 6 (UPI) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, is back in the United States after being indicted in Tennessee on two federal charges involving migrant smuggling, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday.

Bondi said Abrego Garcia, 29, is in the United States to “face justice.”

He made his first court appearance Friday afternoon in Nashville. U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes set his arraignment for Wednesday and a hearing on whether he should be detained before the trial.

The Justice Department said in a court filing that he should be held in pretrial custody because “he poses a danger to the community and a serious risk of flight, and no condition or combination of conditions would ensure the safety of the community or his appearance in court.”

On May 21, a grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee returned an indictment, charging Abrego Garcia with criminal counts of alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling, Bondi said at a news conference.

Abrego Garcia is the only member of the alleged conspiracy indicted.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele was presented with an arrest warrant for him and he agreed to return him to the United States, Bondi said.

“We’re grateful to President Bukele for agreeing to return him to our country to face these very serious charges,” Bondi said.

Bondi said that if Abrego Garcia is convicted of the charges and serves his sentence, he will be deported back to his home country of El Salvador.

“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi said. “They found this was his full-time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country.”

President Donald Trump later told reporters that “I don’t want to say that” it was his call to bring him back to the United States.

“He should have never had to be returned. Take a look at what’s happened with it. Take a look at what they found in the grand jury,” the president told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to New Jersey. “I thought Pam Bondi did a great job.”

Ben Schrader, the chief of the criminal division in the office for the Middle District of Tennessee in Nashville, resigned the same week of the grand jury indictment last month, CNN reported. Schrader’s post on LinkedIn does not mention the Abrego Garcia case.

On April 17, Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen met with his constituent in El Salvador.

“After months of ignoring our Constitution, it seems the Trump Admin has relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and due process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen posted on X Friday. “This has never been about the man — it’s about his constitutional rights & the rights of all.”

In the indictment unsealed Friday afternoon, Abrego Garcia and others are accused of participating in a conspiracy in which they “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 members and associates.”

The allegations from 2016 to this year involve a half-dozen alleged unnamed co-conspirators. Abrego Garcia and others worked to move undocumented aliens between Texas and Maryland and other states more than 100 times, according to the indictment.

They “ordinarily picked up the undocumented aliens in the Houston, Texas area after the aliens had unlawfully crossed the Southern border of the United States from Mexico,” the indictment said.

Abrego Garcia and someone referred to a CC-1 “then transported the undocumented aliens from Texas to other parts of the United States to further the aliens’ unlawful presence in the United States.”

To cover up the alleged conspiracy, prosecutors say Abrego Garcia and his co-conspirators “routinely devised and employed knowingly false cover stories to provide to law enforcement if they were stopped during a transport,” including claims that migrants being transported were headed to construction jobs.

In November 2022, Abrego Garcia is accused of driving a Chevrolet Suburban and was pulled over on a Tennessee interstate highway, with nine other Hispanic men without identification or luggage.

Prosecutors allege that Abrego Garcia transported narcotics to Maryland, though he wasn’t previously charged with any crimes.

“For the last 2 months, the media and Democrats have burnt to the ground any last shred of credibility they had left as they glorified Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a known MS13 gang member, human trafficker, and serial domestic abuser,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement on X. “Justice awaits this Salvadoran man.”

Abrego Garcia and his family have denied allegations that he’s an MS-13 member, and he fled gang violence in El Salvador.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, said his client should appear in immigration court, not criminal court.

“The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order,” Sandoval-Moshenberg Now told CNN. “Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him. This shows that they were playing games with the court all along. Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished, not after. This is an abuse of power, not justice.”

Abrego Garcia deported in March

Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland since he arrived in the United States in 2011 unlawfully.

The government earlier, through a confidential informant, said his clothes had alleged gang markings when he was arrested in 2019.

Abrego Garcia was living with his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and children when he was arrested in March and deported to El Salvador to the maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT. He was with a group of more than 230 men, mostly Venezuelans, accused of being gang members.

In April, the State Department said Abrego Garcia was moved to a lower-security facility in Santa Ana.

The Trump administration has acknowledged that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was a mistake because he had been granted a legal status in 2019. The Department of Homeland Security is banned from removing him to his home country of El Salvador because he was likely to face persecution by local gangs. He didn’t have a hearing before his deportation.

The government has utilized the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime immigration law, to quickly deport migrants from the United States.

In an April hearing, District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to comply with expedited discovery to determine whether they were complying with the directive to return Abrego Garcia to the United States, which was upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year. The high court and district judge said the Trump administration must “facilitate” his return for due process.

On Wednesday, Xinis ordered seven documents to be unsealed in the deportation.

Trump criticized judges for interfering in cases.

“Frankly, we have to do something, because the judges are trying to take the place of a president that won in a landslide,” Trump said Friday night. “And that’s not supposed to be the way it is. So I could see bringing him back … he’s a bad guy.”

The criminal charges could impact his immigration case, John Sandweg, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told CNN.

“I think what we’re going to see is on the back end of this criminal prosecution — now that they’re prosecuting him for these immigration-related offenses — if they get a conviction, they will go back to the immigration court and argue that now there are those changed circumstances,” said Sandweg, who is now a partner at law firm Nixon Peabody.