Abrego Garcia faces two criminal counts in an indictment filed in federal court in Tennessee on May 21, more than two months after Abrego Garcia's March 15 deportation, court records showed.
Attorney-General Pam Bondi on Friday said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to return Abrego Garcia to the US after US officials presented his government with an arrest warrant.
"The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring," Bondi said in a press conference.
In a statement, Abrego Garcia's lawyer, Andrew Rossman, said it would now be up to the US judicial system to ensure he received due process.
"Today's action proves what we've known all along — that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so," said Rossman, a partner at law firm Quinn Emanuel.
Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador, despite an immigration judge's 2019 order granting him protection from deportation to El Salvador after finding he was likely to be persecuted by gangs if returned there, court records show.
Critics of President Donald Trump pointed to the erroneous deportation as an example of the excesses of the Republican president's aggressive approach to stepping up deportations.
The indictment also charges Abrego Garcia and two unidentified co-conspirators with transporting firearms illegally purchased in Texas for resale in Maryland.
Abrego Garcia also transported illegal narcotics purchased in Texas for resale in Maryland and was on some occasions accompanied on those trips by members and associates of MS-13, according to the indictment.
