House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green has demanded that Tennessee authorities turn over unredacted reports and footage from the traffic stop of alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia, where he was suspected of trafficking illegal migrants.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol pulled over Agrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, in 2022 with an eight-person carload.
Fox News obtained the video, in which a trooper asserts that the 29-year-old Salvadoran “was hauling these people for money.”
The suspected gang member was eventually released with a ticket for driving on an expired license. However, a source informed Fox News that in a deleted section of the video, troopers discussed phoning immigration enforcement officers. According to the source, federal authorities did not show up despite a phone call.
Green is now requesting “full” and “unredacted” versions of all traffic stop footage and reports, according to a copy of the letter dated Friday.
Abrego Garcia was pulled up for speeding, but officials got suspicious when they noticed eight other people in the van but no luggage, despite the fact that the party had been driving from Texas for three days.
According to the document, Abrego Garcia informed one of the officers that he was on his way to Temple Hills, Maryland, to “bring in people to perform construction work.”
It was then established that the owner of the car Abrego Garcia was driving had been convicted of transporting illegal aliens in 2020. Abrego Garcia informed the responding cops that he was driving his boss’ automobile.
Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, the convicted criminal, reportedly informed federal authorities that he formerly operated a smuggling operation located in Baltimore and employed Abrego Garcia on “multiple occasions” to transport border crossers throughout the country, according to ABC News.
Green highlighted that the sought material will “shed light on, and ensure the end of, the reckless, open-borders policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” in a statement shared with The Post.
“We will get to the bottom of why Abrego Garcia was released by the Biden-Harris administration despite the Tennessee Highway Patrol’s suspicions of human trafficking,” said the Tennessee Republican.
The Department of Justice is looking into the traffic stop of Kilmar Abgrego Garcia by the Tennessee Highway Patrol in 2022.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, gained headlines after being deported from Maryland to an El Salvador prison by the Trump administration.
Abrego Garcia had unlawfully entered the United States in 2011. The Tennessee Highway Patrol revealed body camera footage from their November 2022 interaction with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, which was initially acquired by Fox News.
At the time, state authorities suspected Abrego Garcia of human trafficking and pulled him over for speeding. He was in the automobile with eight other persons.
Abrego Garcia told officers they had been working on a construction project in Missouri. The soldiers did not give Abrego Garcia a ticket and allowed him to go on.
ABC News learned that Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, 38, was the registered owner of the car operated by Abrego Garcia.
Last month, federal agents who were investigating the traffic stop questioned Hernandez-Reyes at the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega, Alabama. During the course of their investigation, they discovered that Hernandez-Reyes had hired Abrego Garcia on multiple occasions to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to other locations in the United States. This information was obtained by ABC News.
According to sources who spoke with Fox News, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instructed the Tennessee police who had detained Kilmar Abrego Garcia to release him immediately, despite the fact that at the time, he was suspected of engaging in human trafficking and transporting illegal immigrants.