Deported El Salvadoran stopped in car owned by alien who pleaded guilty to human smuggling charges

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the deported El Salvadoran at the center of the Trump administration’s immigration battle with the courts, was stopped by police in an SUV owned by a man who was himself deported after pleading guilty to smuggling illegal aliens in 2020, according to court and Homeland Security Department intelligence documents reviewed by Just the News.

These new details follow Just the News reporting last week that Abrego Garcia was flagged in 2022 by the Biden administration as a "suspect alien" who was possibly involved in “human smuggling/trafficking” after a traffic stop in Tennessee raised the suspicions of a state trooper, according to internal Homeland Security documents.

The Trump administration alleges Abrego Garcia is a member of the notorious El Salvadoran gang MS-13 based on Maryland police identifications and deported him last month back to his home country.

Family and lawyers deny any connection to the gang and are fighting the deportation, arguing it violates a 2019 order that protected Abrego Garcia from being sent back to El Salvador. Meanwhile, a growing body of evidence suggests the illegal immigrant wasn’t the peaceful, law-abiding father "from Maryland," as his wife and lawyers have claimed in the news media.

When Abrego Garcia was stopped in 2022 by the Tennessee state trooper, Homeland Security intelligence created a record of the encounter, Just the News reported. The El Salvadoran was driving a black 2001 Chevrolet Suburban and said he was transporting his passengers to Maryland from Texas for construction work, although the state trooper found no luggage in the SUV.

Homeland Security documents identified the owner of the vehicle as Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes. Abrego Garcia told the state trooper that the owner was his boss. However, that SUV was flagged separately by the Homeland Security Investigations Baltimore field office as belonging to a target they suspected of human trafficking or smuggling, the documents show.

"Vehicle is used by HSI Baltimore target in human smuggling/trafficking operation. Vehicle makes trips to southern border to pick up non-citizens," the record reads. The memo says the Baltimore HSI case agent should be notified if the vehicle is encountered. 

Owner of SUV driven by Garcia deported in 2021, car was on 'watch list'

Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, who Abrego Garcia claimed he was working for, had been previously convicted of smuggling illegal aliens into the United States.

In 2020, Hernandez Reyes, himself an illegal alien, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison for smuggling fellow illegal aliens in the United States after he was stopped by law enforcement in Mississippi in a car with passengers from Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras. Homeland Security records indicate Hernandez Reyes’ “deport order” was reinstated in March 2021, as his 18-month sentence was nearing its end.

A Homeland Security official confirmed to Just the News that the Hernandez Reyes mentioned in both cases refer to the same individual. It is unclear what relationship Abrego Garcia has with Hernandez Reyes. Though he told the Tennessee trooper the vehicle was owned by his boss, Just the News has been unable to confirm whether Abrego Garcia actually worked for Hernandez Reyes.

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia did not respond to requests for comment from Just the News.

Despite this, the similarities between the traffic stops are striking. The Justice Department said that Hernandez Reyes and one co-defendant were stopped by police in Jackson County, Mississippi. The driver, Modesto Alvarez, was later determined to be Hernandez Reyes’ brother-in-law.

Investigators discovered that of the nine men, eight, including Hernandez Reyes, were illegally present in the United States. Three of the passengers—citizens of Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras—were determined to have been previously deported from the United States and had illegally returned, the Justice Department said. They were charged with unlawful reentry to the United States.

Officers determined that Alvarez and Hernandez Reyes were transporting the illegal immigrants from their home base of Houston, Texas, to different locations throughout the United States.

Abrego Garcia was stopped in Tennessee for driving erratically and speeding by a state trooper in late November 2022 and was found to be driving an SUV full of people also coming from Houston, Texas, according to the documents. Abrego Garcia’s expired driver’s license and lack of luggage in the car led the state trooper to suspect smuggling or trafficking was involved, the records show. 

Hernandez Reyes in August 2020 pleaded guilty to smuggling illegal aliens and was sentenced to 18 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, per the Justice Department. Upon completion of the prison sentence, Hernandez Reyes was slated to face deportation proceedings and become subject to a possible further 10 years in prison if he returns.

Unlike the Hernandez Reyes case, the trooper in the case did not arrest Abrego Garcia or escalate the investigation. But, Homeland Security picked up on the traffic stop through its computer-aided dispatch report system. Agents reviewed the target and determined he was a “suspect alien” and referred his matter for review to “passport control," the records show.

Garcia's previous arrest

Three weeks later on Dec. 27, 2022, Homeland updated its records to urge all personnel who encountered Abrego Garcia in the future to “escort to secondary,” a term referring to the investigative procedures used when someone suspected of wrongdoing is encountered at a port of entry or by Border Patrol agents.

Although sympathetic media insist on referring to him as a "Maryland man," Abrego Garcia was previously arrested in 2019 with a group of men detained by Prince George County police in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. Garcia and his passengers “freely admitted being citizens and nationals of El Salvador by birth and that they were present in the United States illegally,” according to police records and immigration court documents released publicly by Attorney General Pam Bondi. They show that the Prince George County gang unit positively identified Abrego Garcia as a member of MS-13, Just the News previously reported. The judge agreed that it was likely that Garcia was indeed a gang member.

That same report showed Abrego Garcia was offered a chance to claim he needed humanitarian assistance for illness or had reason to seek refuge from persecution – two grounds for asylum – but he denied needing either. In fact, he told authorities he was willing to leave the United States, according to the documents. Abrego Garcia was subject to a court order prohibiting his removal to El Salvador on the grounds that he feared persecution.