WASHINGTON—As Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that deported illegal alien and El Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been flown back to the U.S. to face charges of alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling, an investigative reporter—with an assist from the Immigration Reform Law Institute—has discovered further evidence linking Abrego Garcia to an interstate human trafficking ring.
Reporter Jason Hopkins’ story revealed that Abrego Garcia was once pulled over with the same vehicle and license plate driven by another man more recently caught driving about 10 people from Texas to Maryland, according to police and court records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The other man, Ismael Alexander Melara Flores, was pulled over in Arkansas in November 2022 and was cited for an improper window tint, windshield obstruction and for driving people in spaces not meant for passengers. The law enforcement report was obtained with assistance from IRLI’s investigative team.
The report stated that the vehicle—a 2011 Honda Pilot—was sagging in the rear from excessive weight, had approximately 10 people inside, and that the driver was taking them to Maryland from Houston.
According to Hopkins’ reporting, police caught Abrego Garcia without a valid driver’s license and discovered he was transporting eight other individuals in the car with him on Dec. 1, 2022, according to Department of Homeland (DHS) documents previously shared with the Daily Caller. Like Melara Flores, he told the officer that he was driving everyone from Texas to Maryland.
“The narrative that Abrego Garcia was a law-abiding ‘Maryland father’ swept up in an overzealous immigration raid has utterly collapsed,” said Dale Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “There is now an accumulation of evidence that he was a driver in an operation trafficking illegal aliens from Texas to Maryland. If the anti-borders activists had their way, he would still be operating freely in the U.S. and enabling more lawlessness.”
