Kilmar Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty Friday to human smuggling charges, one week after he was brought back to the Unites States from detention in El Salvador.
The 29-year-old entered his plea at his arraignment in Tennessee, where federal prosecutors have charged him with transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S. in what they say was a conspiracy involving the domestic transport of thousands of noncitizens from Mexico and Central America, including some children, in exchange for thousands of dollars.
Following his plea, the judge began hearing arguments over whether to hold a pre-trial detention hearing in order to determine if Abrego Garcia should continue to be held in custody pending trial. That hearing, if approved, would occur next.
The government’s first witness in making its case for detention was Homeland Security special agent Pete Joseph, who testified about his investigation into the 2022 traffic stop where Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding in a vehicle with eight passengers, and told police they had been working construction in Missouri.
As ABC News previously reported, the criminal investigation that led to the charges was launched in April as federal authorities began to scrutinize the stop.
Abrego Garcia has been the subject of a prolonged legal battle since he 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 his family and attorneys deny.
The Trump administration, after arguing for nearly two months that it was unable to being him back, returned him the U.S. last week to face a two-count indictment alleging that, while living with his wife and children in Maryland, he participated in a yearslong conspiracy to haul undocumented migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.
In a court filing on Monday, prosecutors acknowledged that Abrego Garcia would almost certainly be immediately taken in custody by ICE if U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes was to deny their motion for pre-trial detention — but they asked the court to consider, for the sake of argument, the possibility that he “would have an enormous reason to flee” if he were not immediately detained by ICE.
They also argued that Abrego-Garcia’s alleged MS-13 ties put him at risk of attempting to obstruct justice or intimidate potential witnesses against him, including his alleged co-conspirators.
“The United States would submit that at least one co-conspirator has described that the Defendant has previously used his membership in MS-13 not just to facilitate his illegal activity in the smuggling conspiracy but also to intimidate others in the conspiracy who attempted to confront him about the treatment of female smuggling victims and his smuggling of firearms and drugs which added to the conspiracy’s risk of detection and were not a goal of the overall conspiracy,” the government’s filing said.
In response, attorneys for Abrego Garcia said in a filing Wednesday that the Trump administration’s arguments for a detention hearing are meritless.
“It should also come as no surprise that the government has not cited a single case holding that a generic alien-smuggling charge provides grounds for a detention hearing,” Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said. “This case should not be the first.”
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys also argued in the filing that their client is not a flight risk, and said that the government “points to zero facts” suggesting Abrego Garcia has a history of evading arrest, has any prior restrictions, or has “systematically engaged in international travel in the recent past.”
The attorneys also argued that there is no “serious risk” Abrego Garcia will obstruct justice, arguing that the government’s “baseless gang-affiliation allegations” do not support a finding that he poses a “serious risk” of obstructive behavior.
“[The] government is not entitled to seek detention in this case, Mr. Abrego Garcia respectfully asks the Court to deny the government’s motion for detention,” the attorneys said.
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