So-Called ‘Maryland Father’ Indicted for Smuggling Children, Guns and Drugs

A federal grand jury in Nashville has issued a searing criminal indictment of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran in the U.S. illegally, whom Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., referred to as “his constituent” and a “Maryland father.”  

Garcia may be a Maryland constituent, but he won’t win any Father of the Year awards, according to the indictment. He is accused of being involved for almost a decade in organized human trafficking and arms, and narcotics smuggling. This is the person whom Van Hollen went all the way to El Salvador to visit over his “illegal detention” and to demand his return to Maryland. 

Garcia was, according to the indictment, a member of MS-13 who conspired with six others to “transport and move aliens” illegally into and throughout the country starting in 2016. These conspirators “facilitated the travel” of illegal aliens from “El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico, and elsewhere,” and many of those individuals “included MS-13 members and associates.”

Garcia’s job, apparently, was to pick up illegal aliens and gang members in Houston and then move them, which is what he was doing when he got stopped by the Tennessee State Patrol in 2022 while driving a Chevrolet Suburban he did not own. He had an expired driver’s license, and there were nine other unrelated male Hispanics with no IDs and no luggage in the car.   

All of them said they lived with Garcia and, according to the officer, Garcia “pretended to speak less English than he was capable of and attempted to put the encountering officer off track by responding to questions with questions.”

You’d have to lack any common sense not to understand what was going on at that traffic stop. But then, it seems, unfortunately, that Garcia’s supporters lack common sense. The indictment says he made at least 100 trips and transported from six to 10 aliens on each trip.   

If the allegations in the indictment are true (of course, he is presumed to be innocent unless and until the government proves his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt), one can’t fault Garcia for not being a “good provider” for the abused wife who wants him back. The indictment says that Garcia and his cohorts required the illegal aliens to pay “in cash for facilitating their transport.” The conspirators “later transferred, via Western Union and other means, at least some of these monies … to other co-conspirators in foreign countries such as Mexico and Guatemala as part of the wider alien smuggling operation.” 

A “wider alien smuggling operation?” Perhaps Van Hollen may get a few more stamps on his passport if he has to travel to other countries besides El Salvador to visit some of his other “constituents.” 

But the indictment says Garcia wasn’t just picking up illegal aliens. He also “occasionally and simultaneously transported firearms illegally purchased in Texas for distribution and resale in Maryland,” the state in which many of Van Hollen’s other constituents were likely victimized by criminals using the weapons Garcia brought into Maryland.  

Oh, and in addition to the aliens and guns, Garcia is accused of transporting “narcotics purchased in Texas for distribution and resale in Maryland.” 

The grand jury claims Garcia and his fellow hoods “routinely” took the aliens’ cellphones so they couldn’t contact anyone during the trips. They transported them in “an unsafe manner, including using reconfigured vehicles with aftermarket unattached seating rows, and they transported children on the floorboards of vehicles in order to maximize profits.”

So, apparently, “Maryland’s father,” as alleged by the Justice Department, was not only involved in trafficking adults, but he was also smuggling children in a way that risked their lives in traffic accidents.  

The indictment even says that Garcia was disciplined by one of his fellow conspirators after Garcia “abused some of the female” illegal aliens. Garcia’s coconspirator disciplined him because it was “bad for business,” lest you think he was motivated by humanitarian concerns. Abusing females? Sounds familiar. 

This is the guy that Van Hollen has been spending his time and effort on trying to bring back to Maryland. In a letter the senator sent to the El Salvadoran ambassador, Van Hollen said he had met with Garcia’s wife—the one who accused him of domestic abuse—and Garcia’s mother and brother, who were “extremely worried about his health, safety, and continued illegal confinement, as am I.”   

Speaking of relatives, the indictment alleges that Garcia “sometimes brought close relatives with him when he picked up undocumented aliens in Texas and transported them to other parts of the United States.” But the indictment doesn’t identify who those “close relatives” were, which raises a serious question: who were the relatives on those smuggling trips with him? Anyone we know?  

Too bad Van Hollen doesn’t have the same worry about the “health and safety” of the residents of Maryland who were victimized—if the indictment is correct—by Garcia’s trafficking humans, guns, and narcotics for a decade as a member of a dangerous, deadly gang in the state Van Hollen represents.  

Supporters of illegal immigration and open borders have picked the wrong poster child to glorify. And I, for one, am glad that Garcia is in “confinement.”

Hans von Spakovsky is the manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Hans von Spakovsky.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.