Department of Justice investigating 2022 Abrego Garcia for Traffic: Fuentes

The United States Department of Justice has been silently investigating a Tennessee traffic stop in 2022 that involves Kilmar Abrego García, the Salvadoran man in the center of a high -profile judicial battle for his wrong deportation from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, ABC News has learned.

Federal investigators involved in the investigation recently spoke with a convicted criminal in Alabama prison and interrogated him about possible connections with Abrego García, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The inmate, José Ramon Hernández-Reyes, 38, was the registered owner of a vehicle driven by Abrego García when he was arrested by the Tennessee road patrol at the end of 2022, according to sources. Abrego García was arrested for speeding in a vehicle with eight passengers and told the Police that they had been working on the construction in Missouri.

The federal agents who investigated the incident of Tennessee appeared at the end of last month in the federal correctional institution in Talladega, Alabama, to question Hernández-Reyes, whom he had a lawyer present and granted a limited immunity, sources familiar with the interview were said.

Hernández-Reyes told researchers that he previously operated a “taxi service” based in Baltimore. He claimed to have met Abrego García around 2015 and said he had hired him on multiple occasions to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to several places in the United States, sources told ABC News. The frequency and time frame of the supposed trips were not clear immediately.

It is not clear if prosecutors will finally bring enough evidence to present charges against Abrego García. However, Hernández-Reyes’s interview seems to be a new and aggressive step in government efforts to collect potentially incriminating information about Abrego García’s background, even when he resists calls to provide typical protections to respond to such accusations through the US legal system.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment.

According to the images of the body of the 2022 traffic stop, Tennessee’s soldiers, after questioning Abrego García, discussed their suspicions of trafficking in people among them because nine people were traveling without luggage, but Abrego García was not fined or accused. When asked to provide insurance proof, Abrego García told the officers that he would have to call his boss because he did not know where the insurance card was in the car. The audio of the police images is briefly cut after an officer asks Abrego García, who was the owner of the vehicle.

The officers finally did not issue a speeding ticket and allowed Abrego García to continue with only one warning about an expired driver’s license, according to a report on the stop published last month by the United States National Security Department. The Tennessee road patrol, in a statement last month, said the soldiers had contacted the federal authorities before making that decision.

“The Tennessee road patrol can confirm a traffic stop 2022 of Kilmar Armando Abrego García, who was stopped for speeding in the I-40,” said a Tennessee road patrol spokesman. “According to the standard protocol, the THP contacted the federal authorities of application of the law with the FBI of the Biden era, the jurisdiction agency, which made the decision not to stop it.”

Abrego García’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Poshenberg, said last week that he did not see evidence of a crime at the Tennessee traffic stop.

“But the point is not the traffic stop, is that Mr. Abrego García deserves his day in court. Take it back to the United States,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “I have represented Kilmar Abrego García for more than a month, and this video bodycam is the first time he listens to his voice. He has been denied the most basic protections of due process, without a phone call to his lawyer, without a call to his wife or son and have not been heard,” he said.

Sandoval-Moshenberg, when ABC News contacted him on Monday, declined more comments.

When the details of the Tennessee traffic stop were advertised for the first time, Abrego García’s wife said that her husband sometimes transported groups of construction companions between work sites.

“Unfortunately, Kilmar is currently imprisoned without contact with the outside world, which means that he cannot respond to the statements,” said Jennifer Vásquez Sura in mid -April.

The Trump administration in recent weeks has been advertising the interactions of Abrego García with the Police over the years, despite the lack of corresponding criminal charges. And now the incident in Tennessee almost three years ago is under a scrutiny renewed by the Department of Justice, the sources tell ABC News, just when the litigation on its erroneous deportation enters a critical stage.

The Administration faces the deadlines this week to answer requests for discovery about what steps the officials have taken to comply with the order of a district judge, affirmed by the United States Supreme Court, to facilitate the return of Abrego García to the four US officials will also be deposited this week by Abrego-Garcia lawyers.

The expulsion of Abrego García in March to El Salvador violated the order of an immigration judge of the United States in 2019 that protected him from deportation to his native country, according to the registers of the Immigration Court. The judge had determined that Abrego García would probably face the persecution by the local gangs that had already terrified him and his family.

Abrego García was initially sent to the notorious prison of El Salvador, but now it is believed to be celebrated in a different installation.

Last month, after Abrego García’s family filed a lawsuit, the United States District Judge, Paula Xinis, ordered the Trump administration to facilitate its return to the United States, the Supreme Court confirmed that the April 10 ruling.

Hernández-Reyes, who was not present during the Tennessee traffic stop of 2022, was accused in 2020 in a federal accusation of 7 charges for the illegal transport of undocumented immigrants within the United States according to a criminal complaint, Hernández-Reyes had rented a minivan that was withdrawn by the police in Gautier, Insississ, and was found with a total of Newine Undemed. Abrego García was not among them.

Hernández-Reyes supposedly admitted that he was in the United States illegally and told federal investigators of the National Security Department that he had previously lived in Maryland, but since then he had moved to Houston. He said he operated a Texas -based business that transported people around the US for $ 350 per person. In June 2020, he declared himself guilty of a single illegal transport charge of a foreigner and was sentenced to 18 months in prison and subsequently deported, according to judicial records.

He was found in the United States at the end of 2022 when he was accused in Montgomery County, Texas, with illegal discharge of a firearm, according to the state court records.

After fulfilling time in Texas, he was federally accused of illegally restarting the United States after being previously convicted of a serious crime. He declared himself guilty and sentenced to 30 months.