BODYCAM: Tennessee police suspected Kilmar Abrego Garcia of human trafficking in 2022 traffic stop

Newly released body camera footage reveals the 2022 traffic stop of MS-13 gang member and illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, who has since been deported to El Salvador under the Trump administration. Police suspected him of human trafficking for labor at the time.

The footage, obtained by Fox News, shows Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers pulling over Abrego Garcia on November 30, 2022, for speeding. Inside his vehicle were eight other men, raising immediate concerns of human trafficking. "He’s hauling these people for money," one trooper is heard saying on video.

Abrego Garcia, 29, entered the US illegally in 2011 and was ordered deported in 2019. Two immigration judges determined he was likely affiliated with MS-13. Despite his background and a deportation order, an immigration judge determined that he should remain in the United States after Abrego Garcia claimed his life would be in danger if he returned to El Salvador.

When troopers ran his name through the National Crime Information Center, a warning flagged him as a suspected gang member or terrorist, Fox News reported. He was also carrying $1,400 in cash—believed to be payment for human labor trafficking—and had an invalid Maryland driver’s license. 

"This is a good stop," one trooper said during the encounter. However, since the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia this year, mainstream media outlets have portrayed him as a “Maryland father” wrongly deported. Although the Trump administration said that his deportation was in error in court documents, the administration has said that it was a mere administrative error, and that Abrego Garcia still had to be deported.

US District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee, has ordered the federal government to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States from El Salvador to correct the error to complete due process.

Further court records from Maryland show that in 2021, Abrego Garcia’s wife described years of domestic abuse. “I have multiple photos/videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he [has] left me,” she wrote, adding that she feared for her life. In another filing, the wife’s ex referred to Abrego Garcia as a gang member.