Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a confirmed member of the violent MS-13 street gang who was deported to El Salvador from Maryland, was suspected of being engaged in human trafficking by a Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officer who detained him in December 2022, but the FBI under former President Joe Biden ordered he be released.
According to the Tennessee Star, Garcia was stopped on December 6, 2022, and the officer immediately discovered Abrego Garcia was transporting seven passengers from Texas to Maryland.
During a nearly two-hour traffic stop, the officer determined that Garcia was operating the vehicle without a valid driver’s license and, after searching for information about him, discovered that he was on a terrorist watch list, but couldn’t locate Garcia on a deportation list.
However, another source told the outlet that it was one of his passengers, not Garcia, who was on the terrorist watch list. To settle the confusion, THP contacted the FBI, which at the time was led by former Director Christopher Wray under the Biden administration. The FBI instructed the officers at the scene to take pictures of all eight people and document the contents of the vehicle.
Once the FBI received the pictures, the agency reportedly requested that the THP release all eight individuals, and officers complied with the request.
On Wednesday, it was revealed that Abrego-Garcia was arrested on March 28, 2019, during a meeting with several high-level MS-13 members in Hyattsville, Maryland, despite repeated claims by Democrats that he had no gang affiliation. Garcia’s wife had petitioned for a domestic violence protective order against him in 2021.
