Released bodycam video of Kilmar Abrego Garcia being pulled over for speeding appeared to support police impressions that the illegal migrant was involved with human trafficking at the time.
Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration said it deported to El Salvador because he's a member of the MS-13 gang, was pulled over by Tennessee Highway Patrol in November 2022. That's more than two years before Democrats and progressives focused on using the El Salvador native as an example of what they insist is President Donald Trump's excessive immigration policies.
While mainstream media websites have shared snippets of the bodycam video, a 5-minute video offered a fuller version of Abrego Garcia's interaction with police.
When he was pulled over, Abrego Garcia was in a vehicle with eight other people. Police asked him about the vehicle's dark windows, and whether he had added another row of seats, The National News Desk reported.
State troopers found Abrego Garcia, who admitted he had a suspended Maryland driver's license, with $1,400 in cash.
"You know what you got here, right?" one officer asked the person wearing the bodycam. "He's hauling these people for money is what he's doing.
"He's getting paid to haul these people, probably to Maryland, I would say. That's my guess."
An officer seen speaking with Abrego Garcia asked about the apparently altered vehicle.
"How many rows have you got in here? Four seats? Four rows of seats?" the state trooper is heard saying in the video. "Did y'all put an extra one in? Huh? Did y'all put another one in no? They come like this I've never seen one with that many seats in it."
In the video, Abrego Garcia is heard changing his story. After first saying was headed "back to work" in St. Louis, Missouri, he then said he lived in Maryland, and later added he worked in St. Louis "but was finished."
The illegal migrant said the vehicle belonged "to my boss" and was seen struggling to locate proof of insurance.
Abrego Garcia, from El Salvador, had been living in Maryland for years before being arrested and sent to a prison in El Salvador.
A redacted piece of the video showed that state troopers called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, who did not come to the scene to pick up Abrego Garcia, according to Fox News.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.