Kilmar Abrego Garcia, pictured at center, accompanied by his attorney, released from jail in Putnam County, Tennessee on August 22, 2025. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) Photograph by John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout ©2025
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose wrongful deportation to a prison in El Salvador brought widespread public scrutiny of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown tactics, was released from a rural Tennessee jail on Friday, four months after being detained while driving to his Maryland home.
Abrego is expected to be escorted back to Maryland by a private security firm and report for pretrial supervision, according to conditions sought by his attorneys approved by a federal magistrate in Nashville. He will also be under the supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which could choose to detain him. A Maryland court order requires he be given 72-hours notice if the government plans to send him to a “third country.”
Abrego, as the Tennessee court refers to him, was dispatched to El Salvador after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Maryland, where he has lived with his wife and children and works as an apprentice sheet metal worker. A government prosecutor later conceded his deportation was an error. Abrego, who entered the country illegally as a teen, was the subject of an immigration court order barring his removal to his home country of El Salvador, where he said he feared gang violence.
He was returned to Tennessee in June to face human smuggling charges that prosecutors say are tied to a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop. Abrego was neither cited nor arrested when he was pulled over by Tennessee Highway Patrol officers with nine passengers in his vehicle. Prosecutors now allege the stop was part of a human smuggling operation in which Abrego was paid to transport immigrants illegally in the United States to points around the country.
Abrego has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
This story may be updated.
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