Kilmar Abrego Garcia returns to the U.S. to face charges.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

Are you new here? Get free emails to your inbox daily. Would you rather listen? You can find our podcast here.

Today’s read: 13 minutes.

Coming soon!

Executive Editor Isaac Saul and several members of the Tangle team are in Washington, D.C., today, working on a video about Congress. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be releasing more video coverage on our YouTube channel, so keep your eyes peeled for updates! 

In the meantime, go check out some of our recent videos. Last week, we published a conversation between Isaac and Jonah Platt about Zionism, and the week before we ran an in-depth exploration of the controversy behind fluoridated drinking water.

Quick hits.

1. The Defense Department mobilized 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles in response to protests and riots in parts of the city. (The mobilization) Separately, California sued the Trump administration over its deployment of the state’s National Guard to Los Angeles. (The suit)
2. Ukraine said that Russia launched its biggest overnight drone attack since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, launching an estimated 479 drones at various targets in the country. (The attack) Separately, Russia and Ukraine completed the first stage of the prisoner exchange agreed to at last week’s peace talks in Istanbul. (The exchange)
3. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he will remove every member of the independent panel advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines, saying the move will allow the Trump administration to appoint its own members and restore public trust in vaccines. (The removals)
4. President Donald Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for 40 minutes on Monday to discuss the administration’s ongoing nuclear talks with Iran. (The call)
5. Israel intercepted a group of activists, which included climate-activist Greta Thunberg, as they attempted to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza via boat. Thunberg and others were deported. (The deportation)

Today’s topic.

The return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. On Friday, the United States returned Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador to face charges in Tennessee for alleged trafficking of unauthorized migrants and conspiracy. In March, Abrego Garcia was mistakenly sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison in El Salvador. Then in April, the Supreme Court upheld a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis requiring the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. El Salvador agreed to release Abrego Garcia after the U.S. presented it with an arrest warrant, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday. The Trump administration says that Abrego Garcia’s return satisfies the court’s order.

Back up: In March, the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia and hundreds of other noncitizens to a detention facility in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which gives the president the wartime authority to deport any foreign nationals of an enemy nation. However, a 2019 court order blocked the government from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador due to threats on his life, and the administration called his deportation an “administrative error.” President Donald Trump, in an April meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, said that he was unable to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. 

The Justice Department has accused Abrego Garcia of federal conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation, according to a two-count grand jury indictment filed in the Middle District of Tennessee court last month. Specifically, the indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia and six unnamed co-conspirators transported unauthorized migrants from the southern border through the United States in association with the gang MS-13 from 2016 to 2025. The Justice Department references a traffic stop in Tennessee in November 2022 as evidence, in which Abrego Garcia was caught speeding in a modified Chevrolet Suburban with nine male passengers not carrying identification. Abrego Garcia told police he was returning to Maryland from a construction job in St. Louis, Missouri.

“This is what American justice looks like,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said. “Over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring.” Bondi further alleged that Abrego Garcia was trafficking weapons, narcotics, and children for MS-13.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, accused the government of abusing its power and denied the allegations. “The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order. Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement to CNN. “Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished, not after.” 

Ben Schrader, the head of the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Nashville, Tennessee, resigned shortly after Abrego Garcia’s indictment on Friday. Schrader did not comment on the motivation for his resignation. Abrego Garcia’s arraignment hearing is scheduled for June 13 in Nashville.

Below, we’ll cover what the right and left are saying about the case. Then, I’ll give my take.

What the right is saying.

• Many on the right are glad the Trump administration is arraigning Abrego Garcia in the U.S. and expect him to be convicted and deported again.
• Some criticize Democrats’ messaging on the case. 
• Others note the abrupt change in the administration’s messaging.

National Review’s editors wrote “Abrego Garcia faces justice.”

“Regarding the celebrated case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order, the administration should have brought him back to the U.S. months ago and detained him here until it could figure out what to do with him,” the editors said. “After devoting countless man-hours to obfuscating in courtrooms and legal briefs, the administration has finally availed itself of this obvious option. Department of Justice lawyers tried to provide as few details about the government’s handling of the case as possible, and the administration maintained the manifestly implausible position that there was nothing they could do to get El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele to return Abrego Garcia.”

“All this said, Abrego Garcia was never the father of the year, as the left tried to portray him, and he’s going to face serious charges of human smuggling. The administration will have to prove its case in court… but the indictment includes damning facts about one incident we already knew about when Abrego Garcia was pulled over in Tennessee in 2022 with nine other Hispanic males in his vehicle,” the editors wrote. “Abrego Garcia never should have been in the United States in the first place, and he abused the asylum process and benefited from lax enforcement — in both the Obama and first Trump administrations — to stay here. The Trump administration was right to want to deport him.”

In The Washington Examiner, Peter Laffin suggested “Democrats’ Abrego Garcia blunder could haunt the party for years.”

“The Democratic beatification of Kilmar Abrego Garcia stands to go down as an historic American political blunder. The illegal immigrant and MS-13 gangbanger ‘accidentally’ deported to his native El Salvador did not become a martyr randomly — he was purposefully chosen by Democrats and their legacy media machine to highlight the supposed evil of Trump’s deportation efforts,” Laffin said. “The legacy media… [spread] the false idea that Abrego Garcia was a sympathetic political prisoner of Trump’s supposedly racist deportation scheme. Headlines depicting him as an innocent, law-abiding American spread rapidly.

“The problem is that this framing and these facts are incorrect. Upon his return to the United States, he will face charges of human trafficking, which includes unaccompanied minors. He allegedly participated in over 100 trips from Texas to Maryland from 2016 to 2025. He is also being accused of transporting firearms and narcotics purchased in Texas for resale in Maryland,” Laffin wrote. “The government’s evidence will surface slowly as its case unfolds. And each time the public learns some hideous new detail about Abrego Garcia’s misdeeds, they will be reminded of the sympathy he received from Democrats and the legacy media in those early weeks and months.”

In The Washington Post, Jason Willick said Abrego Garcia’s return “signals a major White House change.”

“What a climbdown by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller… Miller taunted the Supreme Court, gleefully distorting what it had held. A district judge, he claimed, had told the Trump administration ‘to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here,’ but the Supreme Court ruled ‘9-0 in our favor,’” Willick wrote. “For weeks afterward, Miller breathed fire on social media while the administration stonewalled in court. But on Friday, Abrego García showed up in Tennessee. The Trump administration apparently decided to ‘kidnap’ him after all to suit its changing political needs.”

“The media can’t resist turning certain subjects into saints, and reporters have labored to portray Abrego García as sympathetic. But this story was never about a particular migrant’s character. At stake is whether the executive branch can send people from U.S. soil to foreign prisons and hold them there even when courts say it is illegal,” Willick said. “To convict Abrego García in the United States, the executive branch has to prove he committed crimes — a nontrivial step it did not take before having him incarcerated abroad. And now that he’s back under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, the administration will have trouble illegally deporting him a second time… In short, the Trump administration was using extralegal methods to punish Abrego García. Now it seems prepared to use legal methods. That is a major change.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is heartened by Abrego Garcia’s return, though many note the charges against him are serious. 
• Some are skeptical about the evidence the government claims in its indictment. 
• Others say Abrego Garcia’s return avoids a constitutional crisis. 

The New York Daily News editorial board called Abrego Garcia’s return “a win for the rule of law.”

“Finally obeying the Supreme Court’s ruling 9-0 to return to the U.S. Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man with legal protections who was illegally sent to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador, the Trump administration has followed the law and brought him back. That is good,” the board wrote. “Whether the indictment is solid or not, Abrego García will now have competent legal defense and will be before independent judges. He is entitled to all protections that are due under the Constitution, which the disappearance of him to El Salvador abrogated.

“There are no new facts in this case, only what was substantially already known to investigators and prosecutors. There could be myriad reasons why federal law enforcement did not take any action beforehand, ranging from lack of evidence to simple resource allocation,” the board said. “But what is certain is that only reason why they’re pursuing it now: to send the signal that the Trump government won’t tolerate questioning its enforcement efforts, and that if you become enough of a public thorn in their side — even if it is the result of popular outrage you don’t have any hand in — they’ll go after you. As predictable as a ploy as this is, it’s at least a good thing that he will not remain in the Salvadoran prison system.”

In Slate, Mark Joseph Stern argued the case against Abrego Garcia is “highly suspect.”

“An indictment — which is notoriously easy to obtain — sheds little light on the matter. But already, there are at least five reasons to be skeptical that the government is acting in good faith and telling the truth about Abrego Garcia,” Stern wrote. “First, it is unclear why the Trump administration waited so long to bring this indictment if the facts are as damning and undeniable as it claims… Second, and relatedly, the federal government took a very different view of the 2022 incident when it occurred. There was no overt evidence that Abrego Garcia was smuggling immigrants across the country, as prosecutors now claim.”

“Third, as Just Security’s Ryan Goodman has noted, the government’s account of the 2022 traffic stop has shifted… Fourth, prosecutors have now brought forth a raft of disturbing allegations about Abrego Garcia’s behavior, accusing him of regularly smuggling guns, transporting migrants for cash, and attempting to solicit child pornography. But it has provided literally no supporting evidence for its claims about child pornography, or even the scantest details about this eye-popping accusation,” Stern said. “Finally, ABC News has reported that Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, has resigned over his office’s conduct in this case, fearing that Abrego Garcia was targeted for political reasons.”

In The Atlantic, Nick Miroff wrote “Kilmar Abrego Garcia was never coming back. Then he did.”

“The Trump administration will get its opportunity to prove what it has long alleged about Abrego Garcia’s membership in the gang MS-13. Even if prosecutors fail to convict him, the government could attempt to deport him to a third country—just not back to El Salvador,” Miroff said. “But by bringing him back to the United States, the Trump administration has climbed down from the court-defying pedestal where Vice President J.D. Vance, the adviser Stephen Miller, and Cabinet officials perched for months, claiming that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was not, in fact, a mistake, and that he would never be allowed to set foot in the country again. Their obstinacy led to warnings of a constitutional crisis.”

“Now, by bringing Abrego Garcia back to face criminal charges, the administration can quiet the constitutional concerns about his due-process rights and lay out the evidence it claims to possess,” Miroff wrote. “This is the second time in a week that Trump officials have relented on one of the cases in which federal judges ordered the government to bring back a deportee removed from the country without due process. A gay Guatemalan asylum seeker known in court documents as O.C.G., who was wrongly deported to Mexico, was allowed to return and pursue his protection claim on Wednesday.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Abrego Garcia may not be a good guy, and he may be guilty of serious crimes.
• Sending him to a foreign prison was a grievous error, and the government’s case invites major skepticism.
• No matter his guilt or the government’s motive, Abrego Garcia having his day in U.S. court is a good thing.

First and foremost, I’m glad Abrego Garcia is coming back to the United States.

If we become a country that condemns people to prison — especially maximum-security prisons for terrorists in a foreign country — without appropriately proving that they have committed a crime, that would be bad. Obviously and unambiguously bad. I’ve already made the case for due process, and why even unsympathetic characters or noncitizens should always be granted their rights. Abrego Garcia deserves his day in court; now he’s going to get it.

The Trump administration erred in several ways with Abrego Garcia’s deportation: It used the Alien Enemies Act illegally, a verdict now rendered by five separate federal judges (most recently an El Paso judge, who ruled on Monday that Trump cannot unilaterally declare an invasion). It violated the law by sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, where a court had expressly prohibited him from being sent. The administration admitted that error, but then pretended it was powerless to correct it. Lastly, when the Supreme Court ordered them to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, the administration acted like it had won the case when really they had definitionally lost 9–0. 

Being in our country illegally is a good enough reason to deport someone; it’s not a good enough reason to deport someone into a prison where they may remain for years, decades, or their entire life. Now that the government has brought Abrego Garcia back, they’ve proven what we all knew the entire time: Returning him was not that hard to do. 

Remember: Abrego Garcia does not have to be a good guy for you to believe any of the above. You can think he committed crimes and that a court must prove him guilty before he can be sentenced. You can think illegal immigration is bad and that unauthorized migrants have rights. You can think Abrego Garcia should be deported and that he should not be sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador without due process. 

Now that the administration has finally indicted Abrego Garcia, they have the opportunity to prove he is guilty of a set of crimes — and they just might. Many Democratic politicians and journalists have consistently framed him as an innocent “Maryland father,” but I’ve always been careful to avoid that assumption. Here is what I wrote in April:

Much about Abrego Garcia’s story is sympathetic. He has no criminal record; he’s married to an American citizen; he is the father to a disabled and autistic child; he is a union sheet-metal worker; and he regularly checked in with ICE when he was supposed to. 

But his case is also complicated: He crossed the border illegally in 2012, and in 2019 he was accused of being a member of MS-13, an accusation an immigration judge used to deem him “removable” but hasn’t been officially verified. He only claimed to be fleeing violence in El Salvador after being arrested and facing deportation in 2019, and he was still eligible for removal (just not to El Salvador). While he regularly checked in with ICE, he has reportedly skipped several court appearances for traffic violations.

Reading through the Justice Department’s indictment, a few things stand out. Most notably, the administration is not just accusing Abrego Garcia of being an MS-13 gang member, but of trafficking unauthorized migrants, guns and drugs around the United States, as well as smuggling minors and abusing women. 

The most damning (and only direct) evidence that the administration seems to have comes from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. Body-camera footage of the stop has been released to the public (and it only takes 90 seconds to watch). The government alleges that the video shows Abrego Garcia transporting a van full of unauthorized migrants from Texas to Maryland, then lying to officers that he was returning from a work site in St. Louis. The indictment claims that license-plate-reader technology showed the Chevrolet Suburban he was driving was in Houston a week earlier and had not been to St. Louis in the prior 12 months. 

This traffic stop was first reported months ago, which adds legitimacy to the Justice Department’s case by proving the government did indeed have some real evidence to use against Abrego Garcia. However, it also raises a slew of questions, like “why didn’t the government charge him at the time?” or “why didn’t the Trump administration use this information earlier?” One high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee has already resigned, and an anonymous source in his office claims he resigned in response to Abrego Garcia being targeted for political reasons. Also, the government has presented no evidence to support its more bombastic claims (like that he was soliciting child pornography). Taken together, the circumstantial evidence makes me skeptical of the government’s case and concerned it might be concocting its claims as a premise to comply with the courts.

Even if my doubts prove to be well founded, Abrego Garcia’s indictment is still a good thing. As Ilya Somin wrote in Reason, “even a possibly questionable prosecution in a court with proper due process is far better than deportation to imprisonment with no due process at all.”

Abrego Garcia’s guilt or innocence was never what mattered most about his case to me. Instead, what matters is that we respect the individual rights of noncitizens, that this administration obeys court orders, and that our country doesn’t perform immoral acts. Because if the government can do whatever it wants with noncitizens, nothing is stopping it from accusing anyone of a crime, claiming the accused is not a citizen, saying noncitizens don’t get due process, then locking them in a maximum security prison with no end date or oversight. 

All of what’s happening now — Abrego Garcia returning to the U.S. and facing legitimate charges — is a resolution to these worries, even in some small way. I’m happy to see him get his day in court, whether he’s guilty or not. 

Take the survey: What do you think of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case? Let us know!

Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.

Help share Tangle.

I'm a firm believer that our politics would be a little bit better if everyone were reading balanced news that allows room for debate, disagreement, and multiple perspectives. If you can take 15 seconds to share Tangle with a few friends I'd really appreciate it — just click the button below and pick some people to email it to!

• Email Tangle to a friend by clicking here.
• Share Tangle on X/Twitter by clicking here.
• Share Tangle on Facebook by clicking here.

Your questions, answered.

Q: Can you shed some light on your opinion of climate science? Having population growth is the worst thing we can do for climate, unless you don’t believe what the science is telling us. 

— Laurie from Durham, NC

Ari Weitzman, Managing Editor: If you ask different members of our team for their opinions on the ethics of having kids in light of climate change, you’re likely to get different opinions. However, as the person on staff who wrote a piece about the ethics of having kids in light of climate change, I’ll give you my answer: I don’t think that “having population growth is the worst thing we can do for climate.”

First off, Tangle, as a whole, is an organization that accepts that climate change is occurring. Not only that, but we accept the scientific consensus that human behavior is causing rapid climate change through the extensive release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This belief is supported by the many climate models that work from the theory of anthropogenic (or “human-caused”) climate change and continue to prove their own projections to be correct.

Second, do climate scientists say that the largest driver of climate change is having a child in a developed country, with one study putting the effect about eight times greater than the combined effects from living without a car, taking fewer flights, and eating a plant-based diet. I take issue with some aspects of that finding, but it is logical and somewhat straightforward to say that the biggest driver of human-caused climate change is the creation of more humans. 

So, why do I disagree with your statement? Mostly because, as I get into in the ethics piece, no human action can be “bad for the climate.” We care about the environment only insofar as it can support people; the climate does not care if we make it inhospitable to us. The climate is neither good nor bad, it just is. That may sound like a pointless abstraction, but it’s actually important — because if you follow a path of argument that says “making humans is bad for humanity,” you get to dangerous and irrational conclusions pretty quickly (as in, why stop at preventing more people…). We have to accept that we’ll continue to have people, otherwise caring about climate change is kind of pointless. 

Yes, there are limits to what environmentally sustainable population growth looks like; but supporting population growth — right now in the U.S. — comes at a time when the fertility rate is far below replacement levels. Personally, I find supporting population growth relative to that baseline and caring about climate change, at the same time, relatively easy.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

The White House is reportedly having difficulty finding candidates for key roles at the Pentagon in the wake of several high-profile exits from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staff. Vice President JD Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles have attempted to help Hegseth choose a new chief of staff after his first one was fired in April, but they are reportedly struggling to find candidates interested in the position who align with the administration’s agenda. The White House has rejected some of Hegseth’s choices for the role — and vice versa — and at least three people have already turned down potential roles under the defense secretary. NBC News has the story.

Numbers.

• 83. The number of days Kilmar Abrego Garcia was held in Salvadoran custody.
• 57. The number of days between the Supreme Court’s ruling ordering the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and his return.
• 53% and 21%. The percentage of U.S. adults who said the Trump administration should and should not comply, respectively, with the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate the release of Abrego Garcia, according to an April 2025 YouGov poll.
• 11% and 49%. The percentage of U.S. adults who thought the Trump administration would and would not comply, respectively, with the Supreme Court’s order.
• 10. The maximum number of years in prison Abrego Garcia could face for each unauthorized migrant he allegedly transported, if convicted. 
• 100. The approximate number of trips the government’s indictment alleges Abrego Garcia undertook to transport unauthorized migrants from Texas. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about the Hunter Biden trial.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the link to the 2015 “leopards eating faces” tweet.
• Nothing to do with politics: In case you missed it, here are the highlights from this weekend’s exciting French Open women’s and men’s finals.
• Yesterday’s survey: 4,389 readers answered our survey on the Los Angeles protests with 58% calling the violence rare or mostly contained. “I live 20 minutes south of where the protests took place. If it hadn't been for the news, it would have been a typical Sunday here,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Police officers in Westlake, Ohio, had an unusual rescue mission: Save a baby deer trapped in a backyard soccer net. A video captured by one officer’s body camera shows the panicked fawn struggling to move, while a female deer lingers anxiously nearby. The officer pulls the net off piece by piece, carefully cutting it away before the freed fawn runs off, followed closely by her relieved mom. Sunny Skyz has the video.

Don’t forget...

🎧 We have a podcast you can listen to here.

💵 If you like our newsletter, drop some love in our tip jar.