NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Kilmar Abrego Garci pleaded not guilty to human smuggling charges during an arraignment in federal court in Tennessee on Friday.

Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador who had been living legally in the United States before he was wrongfully deported in March. His case has become a rallying point for opposition to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Facing mounting pressure to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S., the Trump administration brought him back last week. However, he was immediately taken into custody on new criminal charges filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee. In court filings, prosecutors accused him of being a dangerous member of the notorious MS-13 gang, but the charges against him are only for transporting people who were in the country illegally.

Still, he could face a lengthy prison sentence. He is accused of transporting hundreds of people over many years, and the maximum sentence for transporting each person is 10 years.

Before the hearing began in Nashville, Abrego Garcia’s wife told a crowd outside a church that Thursday marked three months since the Trump administration “abducted and disappeared my husband and separated him from our family.”

Her voice choked with emotion, Jennifer Vasquez Sura said she saw her husband for the first time on Thursday. She said, “Kilmar wants you to have faith,” and asked the people supporting him and his family “‘to continue fighting, and I will be victorious because God is with us.’”

Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador who had been living in the United States for more than a decade before he was wrongfully deported by the Republican administration in March. The expulsion violated a 2019 U.S. immigration judge’s order that shielded him from deportation to his native country because he likely faced gang persecution there.

While the Trump administration described the mistaken removal as “an administrative error,” officials have continued to justify it by insisting Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. His wife and attorneys have denied the allegations, saying he’s simply a construction worker and family man.

Trump’s administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. last week to face criminal charges related to what it said was a human smuggling operation that transported immigrants across the country. The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with eight passengers. His lawyers have called the allegations “preposterous.”

U.S. attorneys have asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes to keep Abrego Garcia in jail, describing him as a danger to the community and a flight risk. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys disagree, pointing out he was already wrongly detained in a notorious Salvadoran prison thanks to government error and arguing due process and “basic fairness” require him to be set free.

The charges against Abrego Garcia are human smuggling. But in their request to keep Abrego Garcia in jail, U.S. attorneys also accuse him of trafficking drugs and firearms and of abusing the women he transported, among other claims, although he is not charged with such crimes.

The U.S. attorneys also accuse Abrego Garcia of taking part in a murder in El Salvador. However, none of those allegations is part of the charges against him, and at his initial appearance June 6, the judge warned prosecutors she cannot detain someone based solely on allegations.

One of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys last week characterized the claims as a desperate attempt by the Trump administration to justify the mistaken deportation three months after the fact.

“There’s no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,” private attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.