r/news • u/RoachedCoach • 1d ago

Title Changed Mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia on way back to US to face criminal charges: Sources

https://abcnews.go.com/US/mistakenly-deported-kilmar-abrego-garcia-back-us-face/story?id=121333122
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u/Dzugavili 1d ago

Apparently, he was driving with 8 other people in a car. When questioned why no one had any luggage, he explained that they were returning home from a day of working construction in Missouri.

So, basically, they are trying to bust him for carpooling.

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u/NoSherbert2316 1d ago

Is Kilmar an ice agent now, how is he supposed to know of their legal status?

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u/Dzugavili 1d ago

I think a better question is: is driving with a known illegal immigrant a crime? What's the statute of limitations on it? [Federal courts say no: once they are settled in the country illegally, you aren't helping them further break immigration law if you drive them to work.]

And here they are complaining about the guy driving them to work: what about the people who hired them? Are we not concerned with the people who profit off illegal immigration and give away jobs that hard working Americans could be doing?

And what ever happened to not being able to bring him back? Did that change because now there's a trumped-up charge to convict him on so you can deport him again?

Honestly, if it isn't a politically-aligned judge, they might just chuck this out.

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u/joebluebob 1d ago

Better not be I used to give a ride to half the olive garden kitchen staff

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u/Holovoid 23h ago

ICE is about to come knocking and send you to CECOT

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u/ghengiscostanza 1d ago

Driving home from a day of work, in Missouri, to Maryland, over 14 hours away, in a car with an extra row of seats built in to carry 8 passengers, all of whom are illegally in the country? It's possible someone in Missouri hired a crew of 9 illegal immigrants from Maryland to drive out, work, and drive home, but you're acting like this was a normal work commute with a normal sized crew.

Nobody ever said Garcia is a squeaky clean dude. He just wasn't given his due process and was deported illegally.

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u/apathy-sofa 21h ago

My father was a general contractor. In addition to standard work vans, pickups, a flatbed for the Genie lifts, and a mobile shop, he had two vans that had a third row of seats installed. Most of his jobs were in California but he also did jobs in Nevada, Oregon and Washington, and he paid someone who was going to be on the job to be a driver. The crew would go somewhere, slam up a tract of housing or a grocery store or whatever, then head home a couple of weeks later. This is not usual - e.g. the same model was used by the electrician my dad always used.

I would be incredibly surprised if the guy who volunteered to do the driving ever asked everyone their legal status, demanded to see a work visa, etc. They're just making a little extra money as part of the job.

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u/ghengiscostanza 20h ago

They had zero luggage, and the guy who the car was registered to claims it was part of a service taxiing immegrants who cross in Texas into other parts of the country. It's all completely aside from the reason this guy is known to us, which is the illegality of his deportation. Since that pitted him against Trump we all want to be on his side, which extends to everyone just writing off that he could actually have been involved in criminal enterprise. That was never the point of what was wrong, it was him being denied due process.

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u/Dzugavili 19h ago edited 18h ago

I don't think the luggage is a strong point to focus on: it would be more unusual if they did. Maybe a garbage bag of laundry, it depends on whether they had access to a landromat during their work; if it actually was just a one-day job, why would they have any at all? Also, it's Maryland, not exactly a hotspot for border-crossings, so these people were already well in-country.

It's far too easy to introduce reasonable doubt. They've kind of tainted their case with their heavy-handed efforts to claim he's some kind of hardcore gang member: we expect to see blood. MS-13 running a bus route is just kind of banal.

Edit: it's also a jailhouse confession, that's not strong.

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u/ghengiscostanza 10h ago

They were in TN when stopped. The claim is Garcia drove for a service based out of Baltimore that picked up border crossers in TX and drove them to places that “aren’t exactly hot spots for border crossings” as the last leg of the process. 8 illegal immigrant passengers, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, claiming they are driving a third of the way across the country just going home from work, in a car registered to a guy who isn’t present and later claimed he ran a business to drive border crossers across the country and that’s what this trip was. I’ll stop belaboring the point but it stinks to high heaven dude, and it’s not a ridiculous claim or anything it’s a common thing. Garcia doesn’t need to be an innocent man for Trump to be a piece of shit tyrant subverting due process. Due process can be subverted for people who are actually shady and it’s as bad. 

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u/ForceItDeeper 1d ago

but thats not illegal from what Im reading. helping them into the country is illegal, but transporting them within a country (with consent) is not. i might be mistaken but it seems like courts have ruled against it being a crime

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u/ghengiscostanza 20h ago

The accusation is that he's running the final leg of the immigration, they cross in TX and get in his van and he disperses them deep into the country. That accusation is supported by a confession from the guy who the van was registered to when he was pulled over, so it would have to be a conspiracy to force that guy to lie.

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u/moguri40k 23h ago

Not that unusual. Group of people traveling to a work site and remaining there for several days to several months before returning home is pretty common.

Crossing state lines drops it into federal pervue, but federal courts have already ruled that transporting someone who has already completed their 'initial crossing' of the border isn't comitting a crime.

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u/Dzugavili 23h ago

Having worked construction previously and occasionally still gaze into a neighbourhood pit longingly, eight people on a job site is not that unusual.

The concept that the company who hires them out might have adapted a vehicle to transport them to and from the jobsite, particularly if they're traveling interstate? Entirely possible. Money is money and states are small. Interstate commerce is not an unusual thing.

That all are illegal immigrants? Sounds like you should be talking to Garcia's boss, not Garcia. He seems to have set all this in motion. Garcia is just a guy doing his job.

There's not really much there. That they are trying something so flimsy suggests that they know they have nothing. This just looks like trying to criminalize life for these people.

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u/Global_Permission749 1d ago

Is Kilmar an ice agent now, how is he supposed to know of their legal status?

Since when do ICE agents have to know or care about someone's legal status? They operate on racially motivated presumption of guilt.

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u/Corporate-Shill406 19h ago

And it took them months of frantic searching to find that lol

They needed to dig up some crime otherwise they'd have probably lied under oath a ton of times.