The Department of Homeland Security said last week that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national deported last month under the Trump administration, told the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) that he was traveling from Houston, Texas to Temple Hills, Maryland, with a stop in St. Louis, Missouri, during a late 2022 traffic stop in the Volunteer State.
Claiming he was transporting eight passengers for construction work, and operating a vehicle registered to his boss, DHS on Saturday revealed Abrego Garcia told THP that he began driving “three days” prior to the stretch of I-40 in Putnam County, Tennessee, where DHS reported THP stopped the vehicle for speeding and failing to maintain a lane.
During the stop, Abrego Garcia also produced an expired Maryland driver’s license, which is only issued to illegal immigrants, meaning there is no way he could have legally operated a vehicle in Tennessee. The circumstances of the stop ultimately led THP to suspect Abrego Garcia was engaged in human trafficking.
Despite the suspicions by THP, the agency told The Tennessee Star that the “Biden-era FBI” instructed officers to release Abrego Garcia and his passengers.
The drive from Houston to St. Louis should have taken approximately 12 hours. However, the DHS document did not explain why Abrego Garcia claimed an additional three days were necessary to reach Putnam County, which would have only added about five hours to the journey.
Additionally, the document released by DHS does not explain why Abrego Garcia traveled from Houston to St. Louis if the group’s destination was located in Maryland, as driving through Missouri added more than 300 miles to the trip, requiring about seven hours of additional time in the vehicle for the Salvadoran and his eight passengers.
Abrego Garcia’s vague itinerary suggests the foreign national likely passed through multiple cities with documented crimes involving both human trafficking and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). Two judges previously ruled Abrego Garcia was likely to be a member of the Central American gang, but he has denied this, leading an immigration judge to issue a “withholding of removal” order that prevented his deportation to El Salvador, but not another country, in 2019.
The trip began in Houston, which local and federal authorities have called a major trafficking hub, with criminal elements benefiting from the city’s international airport, seaport, and easy access to America’s interstate highways via I-10 and US-59.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, law enforcement understands MS-13 “to be a major distributor of drugs in Houston,” while the gang is also alleged to be involved with organized retail theft and human smuggling across the country.
Just last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the arrest of Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios at the George Bush International Airport in Houston, after evading the law for more than three years as a fugitive. Months earlier, ICE deported another Salvadoran national, Moises Antonio Chavez Figueroa, back to his homeland after he was accused of murder in El Salvador. The agency reported that Chavez Figueroa was an active MS-13 gang member when he was deported.
If Abrego Garcia took the most direct route upon leaving Houston, it would likely involve driving on US-59 and I-30 until arriving in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the Arkansas Department of Public Safety reported last year that 79 human trafficking victims were rescued as part of one law enforcement operation.
Additionally, the city seems to have some MS-13 presence, evidenced by the active wanted listing by the U.S. Marshals Service for Jose Reyes-Sanchez, a Salvadoran national charged with murder who Marshals reportedly identified as a member of the Central American gang in 2023.
St. Louis, which is situated at the intersection of four major highways, would likely have been the next large city encountered by Abrego Garcia and his passengers, assuming they took the most direct route upon leaving Little Rock during their travels.
National Human Trafficking Hotline data shows Missouri ranked ninth among states reporting calls to the nonprofit that resulted in human trafficking cases in 2023, and in 2019, the state rolled out the Missouri Collaborative Against Human Trafficking (MCAHT) as a statewide initiative to counteract the crime. At the time, an MCAHT press release stated Missouri was ranked 17th in the nation for human trafficking.
Though evidence of MS-13’s presence in St. Louis is scant, it appears to be active in other parts of Missouri, as The Kansas City Star reported in 2022 that two alleged members of the gang were on trial for murdering a Kansas City teen because “they believed he belonged to a rival gang.”
For Abrego Garcia and his passengers to be pulled over on I-40 by THP after leaving St. Louis, the Salvadoran would likely have left the city heading east on US 64, before turning south on US-57, then southeast on US-24, and ultimately arriving in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Star has documented recent arrests, convictions, and sentencing hearings, which document human trafficking, as well as the presence of both the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua and MS-13 within the city. One MS-13 member was recently sentenced in Middle Tennessee to more than a decade in prison after kidnapping and assaulting a witness who testified against the gang during a 2023 racketeering trial.
Earlier this year, federal authorities additionally confirmed that men arrested during a raid on an alleged prostitution ring were members of Tren de Aragua, which is known to engage in human trafficking.
The final destination obtained by THP from Abrego Garcia was Temple Hills, an unincorporated community in Prince George’s County, Maryland, which is part of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria Metro Area surrounding the nation’s capital.
MS-13 has a documented presence in Washington, D.C., including members who have faced allegations or convictions for trafficking, with ICE announcing the life sentence given to one gang member convicted of prostituting a 12-year-old as far back as 2011.
More recently, a Virginia jury convicted seven MS-13 members who trafficked a 13-year-old girl from Virginia to Maryland for prostitution in 2022. Four of the seven men convicted lived in Maryland.
The Star has filed Open Records Requests with the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, seeking all documentation of the traffic stop, as well as police body-worn camera and dashboard camera footage that could depict the passengers transported by Abrego Garcia.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
