NYT has a decent explainer, and is my source for the claim wrt/ it all being bullshit
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/us/abrego-garcia-charges-explainer.html
Part of the charges stem from a November 2022 traffic stop outside of Cookeville, Tenn., where he was driving nine people from Houston to Maryland, according to the indictment.The stop was captured on video by body cameras worn by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, the indictment said.
According to court papers, the vehicle’s passengers did not have identification. Mr. Abrego Garcia told the state troopers that he and the passengers were returning to Maryland from St. Louis after they spent two weeks doing construction work, the indictment said. Troopers said the passengers did not have luggage or construction equipment in the vehicle.
Mr. Abrego Garcia was not charged with any infraction during the stop but was given a warning for driving with an expired license, the indictment said.
Then on March 12 of this year, he was pulled over again, this time in Maryland by a law enforcement officer while he was heading home with his 5-year-old son in the back seat.
He called his wife, Jennifer Vasquez, that night from a detention center in Baltimore. She said immigration agents had accused him of being in the Salvadoran American gang MS-13, stemming from a separate arrest in 2019.
...
What happened during the 2019 arrest?
In March 2019, Mr. Abrego Garcia was standing with three other men in a spot designated for day laborers outside a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Md., when a police officer approached them thinking they were loitering. Two of the men, neither of them Mr. Abrego Garcia, tossed plastic bottles containing marijuana under a parked vehicle.
All four men were arrested and interviewed by the police. Only two of them were accused of having ties to the MS-13 gang. Mr. Abrego Garcia did admit to being in the United States without proper documentation but denied gang membership.
While in detention in 2019, he fought his deportation by requesting a humanitarian exception, because of the gang harassment that his family had experienced in El Salvador. An immigration judge granted him a special status that indefinitely prohibited the government from deporting him to El Salvador.