Judge to rule by next week on Abrego Garcia's detention as he awaits trial

A federal judge in Tennessee said he anticipates making a decision next Monday regarding pre-trial detention for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, after a hearing Wednesday in which government attorneys argued that the accused MS-13 gang member poses a public danger and flight risk too great for any possible bail conditions imaginable.

Abrego Garcia's lawyer countered that the government's probe into allegations of human smuggling against his client was far from thorough and is riddled with credibility issues.

Furthermore, "what happens to Mr. Garcia" if he's released into ICE custody is totally murky, defense attorney Sean Hecker said -- particularly since he was previously "sent to a torture facility" in El Salvador.

The government has said that Abrego Garcia will likely be detained by ICE and deported to a third country if released from criminal custody.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw set a trial date of Jan. 27, 2026.

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native, was deported in March to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison -- despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution -- after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which he denies.

He was brought back to the U.S. last month to face charges in Tennessee of allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S. while he was living in Maryland. He has pleaded not guilty.

After U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ordered last month that Abrego Garcia not be detained by the government pending trial and set conditions for his release, the government sought to reverse that decision at Wednesday's hearing.

Abrego Garcia participated in a "yearslong human smuggling operation," based on accounts from multiple cooperating witnesses, Prosecutor Robert McGuire alleged in court, relying on testimony from Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Peter Joseph.

Joseph testified that one cooperating witness said Abrego Garcia would travel with his own family and children, whom he "forced to ride on the floorboard" of the transport vehicle "to make room for clients."

Another witness allegedly told investigators that he had gotten a complaint from the "source of the supply" -- the supply being humans to be transported -- that Abrego Garcia had acted "inappropriately" to some of the girls, Joseph said. "It affected their business, so they were not pleased with it," Joseph testified.

One cooperating witness, who is an American citizen with no criminal record, separately allegedly told investigators that Garcia had solicited nude pictures of her over Snapchat when she was 15 years old, and also asked if she had an OnlyFans account, Joseph testified.

Hecker pushed back on what he called prosecutors' "remarkably thin" evidence of smuggling minors, arguing that the credibility of the unnamed cooperators was highly in doubt since there was little if any evidence they had direct knowledge of Garcia's role in the alleged scheme.

"Well, all of this is circumstantial," Judge Crenshaw said as Abrego Garcia looked on, appearing to listen intently.

Hecker also questioned how much research Joseph had done. Under questioning, Joseph said he had not reviewed the witness' prior interviews before he spoke with them.

"I wanted to go into the interview fresh," Joseph said.

"Wouldn't it be a concern if those statements were inconsistent?" Hecker said, and wasn't part of his job to "assess their credibility?"

Hecker also probed how prosecutors approached those cooperating witnesses who are currently incarcerated -- and whether there were any promises of sweetheart deals, like the promise of a halfway house instead of prison. Prosecutors said that one cooperating witness had been outed by a national media outlet and needed to be protected.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, reviewed the November 2022 traffic stop in which Tennessee state troopers pulled over Abrego Garcia, who had several others in the vehicle.

Troopers saw no luggage in the nine-passenger suburban, and they noticed an "added fourth row," Joseph testified. When asked where they had driven from, Garcia was untruthful about his path of travel, prosecutors alleged. Though he said they had come from St. Louis, the cell tower pings from his phone showed that was "just not true," McGuire said.

Garcia "knew" that if he told police he was coming from Houston, "it would look like what it was," McGuire said. "He lied to the trooper" to "try and conceal his criminal activity," said McGuire.

No arrests or charges resulted from the traffic stop. An attorney for Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in May that he saw no evidence of a crime.

An official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, testifying in Abrego Garcia's wrongful deportation case in Maryland, said during a hearing last week that Mexico and South Sudan were among a handful of countries where the U.S. has deported noncitizens who have asked not to be returned to their countries of origin out of fear of torture or persecution.

Abrego Garcia's legal team in the Maryland case requested that the judge issue a court order that he not be removed from the U.S. without at least 72 hours notice should he be released on bond from detention in Tennessee.