Posted on 06/23/25
| News Source: FOX45
A federal judge in Tennessee denied the U.S. Department of Justice’s request to keep Kilmar Abrego Garica detained pretrial, but he will likely remain in immigration custody anyway.
The ruling came after a June 13 hearing where Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian citizen, pleaded not guilty to human smuggling charges stemming from a 2022 traffic stop when Tennessee Highway Patrol suspected human smuggling, but didn’t charge him with anything.
Abrego Garcia was brought back to the United States from El Salvador in early June following a months-long public debate over whether the Trump Administration was going to follow court orders to facilitate his return.
In March, Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador. Later attorneys from the Trump Administration admitted in court documents that he was deported by an administrative error, though since then, several top leaders in President Donald Trump’s orbit have walked that back.
In the latest court filing from June 22 denying the federal government’s request to detain Abrego Garcia, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes said, “the Court finds nothing in Abrego’s history to suggest that he is a flight risk.”
However, Holmes noted that he “will likely remain in ICE custody” due to the immigration detainer, suggesting the detention question at hand “is little more than an academic exercise.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on social media that Abrego Garcia “will never go free on American soil.”
During the June 13 hearing, witnesses on the stand in Nashville testified that Abrego Garcia was paid to transport people and smuggled weapons in the vehicle. The witnesses said he may have been making up to $100,000 annually.
Abgreo Garcia was pulled over by THP about 115 miles outside of Nashville, Tenn. for speeding and failing to maintain his lane. During the stop, a THP officer noticed there were eight other people in the vehicle, and despite Abrego Garcia telling the officer he was heading from Texas to Maryland, there was no luggage in the vehicle, according to a DHS document, “leading the encountering officer to suspect this was a human trafficking incident.”
“All the passengers gave the same home address as the subject’s home address,” the DHS report said.
The report suggests the passengers were intentionally not speaking enough English to provide clear answers.
Abrego Garcia told the officer the vehicle belonged to his boss, and he was bringing the passengers in the vehicle to Maryland for work.
FOX45 News confirmed the owner of that vehicle is Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes. In June 2020, Hernandez-Reyes pled guilty to “illegal transportation or moving of an alien,” according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office from the Southern District of Mississippi.
Hernandez-Reyes was involved in a traffic stop in December 2019 in Mississippi where there were nine people in the car. Human smuggling was suspected, according to the news release, and Homeland Security was notified. Eight of the nine were found to be in the United States illegally, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, and after interviewing everyone, “it was determined that seven passengers were being smuggled from Houston, Texas, to different locations throughout the United States.”
During Abrego Garcia’s traffic stop, he was not cited for the driving infraction but was given “a warning citation for driving with an expired driver’s license.”
“During the stop, a standard law enforcement database check returned information that prompted notification to the (FBI),” a statement from a spokesperson from THP stated.
Another hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday, June 25 in Tennessee to discuss the possible conditions for Abrego Garcia’s release. Meanwhile, the federal government filed a motion Sunday evening to stop his release.