Kilmar Abrego Garcia could be released from custody Wednesday
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, was deported to a prison in El Salvador in March and was brought back to the U.S. to face charges of human smuggling following a Tennessee traffic stop. He's accused of conspiring to bring undocumented migrants to the U.S. from around 2016 to 2025.
The charges stem from a traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol in Putnam County in 2022. Body camera video shows officers discussing among themselves their suspicions of human smuggling before letting Abrego Garcia go free. He was not charged with any offense at the traffic stop before he was deported in March and returned on June 6.
Click here for previous coverage on Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
On Wednesday, prosecutors are expected to have a homeland security agent provide testimony about the traffic stop. The judge is expected to then rule on whether Abrego Garcia should be released while he awaits trial.
Immigration officials have said they would immediately detain him and begin deportation proceedings.
A federal judge in Maryland scolded the Trump administration Friday for its refusal to detail its deportation plans for Abrego Garcia, including where the government plans to send him and whether he'll get a chance to fight his expulsion.
The administration argues Abrego Garcia is a danger to the community and can be deported before his trial to a country other than El Salvador. An U.S. immigration official said Thursday Mexico and South Sudan could be willing to accept him.
Abrego Garcia has reportedly lived and worked in Maryland for more than a decade, working construction and raising a family. His American wife is suing the administration over his wrongful deportation in Maryland.
The hearing is expected to begin at 1 p.m.
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Across the South, men arrested for minor offenses were shuttled into convict workforces made up of mostly-African Americans as well as whites such as Tabert. These labor gangs helped build the New South's industrial infrastructure across the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In some cases, these practices lasted until World War II. When Tabert died soon after the beating, the Putnam Lumber Company physician examined his body and declared the causes of death as pneumonia and malaria. The North Dakota attorney general concluded that Putnam was covering up a crime. He determined that the company profited from 'the labor of unfortunate men, picked up and forced into their custody through trivial violations.' North Dakota legislators took up Tabert's cause and pushed Florida to evaluate its entire convict leasing system. Florida's investigative committee learned that similar abuses occurred in camps across the state, including some owned by legislators themselves. The committee also found that, after entering into a deal with Putnam Lumber, the sheriff who arrested Tabert detained nearly eight times more men than he had previously. The arrangement netted him thousands of dollars. Progressive Florida reformers, particularly women's clubs and civic organizations, called on the state to abolish the convict labor system. Dozens of local newspapers attacked the practice of renting convicts to private companies. Tabert's story appeared on the front pages of numerous newspapers from California to Massachusetts. In 1923, a young journalist named Marjory Stoneman Douglas published a poem titled 'Martin Tabert of North Dakota' in her regular column in the Miami Herald. The poem became an anthem for abolishing convict labor in Florida. The tide turned. The whipping boss Higginbotham was convicted of murder. The Florida legislature recommended the camp physician be removed for lying about Tabert's death. Putnam Lumber was forced to pay restitution to Tabert's family. And finally, in 1923, the Florida legislature voted to end the convict leasing system once and for all. Douglas's poem was read in the legislative chambers as the vote came to a close. For Douglas, ending the convict labor system was the first victory in her nearly 80-year activist career. During the Tabert campaign, she called for the creation of a Florida 'public welfare board' to monitor government actions and ensure that, in Douglas's words, 'never again shall the name of the state be blotted as it is now.' The public welfare board created a few years after Tabert's death became the precursor to several state-level public health and family services departments that still exist today. Read More: America Turned Against Migrant Detention Before. We Can Do It Again After helping abolish convict leasing, Douglas used her Miami Herald column to share her unconventional belief that South Florida's Everglades were more than a dismal swamp and that they were instead a natural treasure that needed to be protected. In 1947, she published The Everglades: River of Grass, a book credited with forever changing America's relationship with Florida's wetlands. That same year, Douglas was invited to sit on the platform behind President Harry Truman as he designated the Everglades National Park. In 1969, she founded Friends of the Everglades at the age of 79. Five years later, she helped establish the Big Cypress National Preserve, the largest National Park Service acquisition of private land in U.S. history. The media loved her. Douglas spoke with a powerful moral authority, and she was assigned an endless list of nicknames: Our Lady of the Glades, Guardian of the Glades' Spirit, the Mother Teresa of the Swamp. She continued her environmental and human rights activism until her death at age 108. Today, Trump's detention camp sits inside the Big Cypress National Preserve that Douglas, along with the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes and other conservationists, helped establish as the first of its kind in the United States. But just as the history of violence in Florida's swamps echoes today, so does the creative and bold activism of those like Douglas, who brought down a cruel system in the 1920s. In fact, Friends of the Everglades is currently a plaintiff in a lawsuit against 'Alligator Alcatraz.' Douglas's 1923 poem lamented how the 'black strap cracked' on Tabert's body and 'they nailed his coffin boards together' in the Florida swamps. But she also wrote that 'Florida's rising now,' and encouraged readers to end the poem by shouting Tabert's name. 'From Key West to Pensacola,' Douglas wrote, she could hear 'the angry voice of Florida crying.' Just as 'Alligator Alcatraz' echoes the dark history of Tabert and his abusers, let's also be inspired by the angry, rising voices from a century ago that won justice in Florida's swamps. Antonio Ramirez is Associate Professor of History at Elgin Community College, where he directs the Chicagolandia Oral History Project and the Center for Civic Engagement. He wrote the National Historic Landmark nomination for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas House. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
