Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said the body camera footage of the 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee of Kilmar Abrego Garcia raises more red flags behind the reason why Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officers allowed Abrego Garcia and his nine passengers inside the vehicle to drive off despite suspicions of human trafficking.
Last week, The Star received body camera footage as the result of an Open Records Request filed with the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security (TDOSHS), which revealed that THP officers discussed their suspicion that Abrego Garcia was hauling the nine other passengers in the vehicle “for money” during the November 30, 2022, traffic stop of the vehicle he was driving in Cookeville, Tennessee.
During the stop, THP officers suspected Abrego Garcia of human trafficking, noting that he was transporting the passengers without luggage and driving without a valid license in a 2001 Chevrolet Suburban with a fourth row of added seats and carrying $1,400 cash in an envelope.
Despite these suspicions and after consulting with the Biden-era Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Abrego Garcia was not arrested or charged and was instead issued a warning for the expired license and allowed to drive away from the scene.
On Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Pappert said the body camera footage ultimately confirms and raises questions as to why THP released Garcia and his passengers without further investigation or arrest despite knowing that they likely encountered a human trafficker.
“It seems very clear that the Tennessee Highway Patrol was 100 percent convinced that night that they had a human trafficker on their hands,” Pappert said.
Further stressing how the THP officers were aware that Abrego Garcia was likely engaging in human trafficking, Pappert noted how officers, once they spoke with what is believed to be the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, had the “wind taken out of their sails” and decided not to arrest Abrego Garcia, partly because detaining him would have meant figuring out what to do with the nine passengers.
“Toward the very end of the video, they say if you arrest this guy, you’re just gonna have to drop off his passengers on the side of the highway, on the side of the interstate,” Pappert explained.
“That seems to be the moment where the troopers decided among themselves that, all right, we’re going to let this guy go because we don’t want to have to babysit nine possibly illegal immigrants who don’t speak a lick of English. I think that was the wrong move, personally,” he added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
