Latest news with #AbregoGarcia
Fox News
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Trump admin reaffirms Abrego Garcia won't go free in the US: 'Horrific crimes'
Print Close By Cameron Arcand Published June 27, 2025 Top Trump administration officials maintain that Kilmar Abrego Garcia will continue to go through the legal system in the United States before he is deported again, as the administration maintains he will not walk free in the U.S. Abrego Garcia's lawyers successfully asked the judge on Friday to keep him behind bars to avoid any possibility of an immediate deportation, according to NewsNation. However, the plan is to try Abrego Garcia in the U.S. on the Tennessee-based human smuggling charges before deporting him, according to the Department of Justice. And if he is convicted, the White House says he will spend time behind bars in the U.S. before being deported. JUDGE SETS STRICT CONDITIONS FOR ABREGO GARCIA'S RELEASE AS TRUMP OFFICIALS PURSUE CASE AGAINST HIM "This defendant has been charged with horrific crimes including trafficking children and will not walk free in our country again," DOJ spokesperson Chad Gilmartin told Fox News Digital in an email. The White House further clarified the Executive Branch's stance following an Associated Press report on the comments from federal prosecutors about possibly deporting him to a third country sooner. "This is fake news. Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States to face trial for the egregious charges against him. He will face the full force of the American justice system - including serving time in American prison for the crimes he's committed," White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said in an X post. RETURNED SALVADORAN MIGRANT KILMAR ABREGO GARCIA ARRAIGNED ON FEDERAL HUMAN TRAFFICKING CHARGES IN TENNESSEE DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the 29-year-old will not be freed in the U.S. at any point. "Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a dangerous criminal illegal alien. We have said it for months and it remains true to this day: he will never go free on American soil," she wrote. CLICK HERE FOR MORE IMMIGRATION COVERAGE Abrego Garcia, who was living in Maryland, was deported to El Salvador amid accusations of being an MS-13 gang member, as it is a designated foreign terrorist organization. He then spent time detained at the country's terrorism confinement center. While detained in the country, it sparked a political firestorm in which Democrats raised concerns about due process, with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-M.D., even meeting with him in the Central American nation. During his El Salvador detainment, past records alleging domestic abuse surfaced, as well as reports that he allegedly had taken part in human smuggling, which ultimately led to the federal charges brought forth earlier this month that resulted in his return to American custody. DEMOCRATS CELEBRATE RETURN OF SUSPECTED HUMAN TRAFFICKER KILMAR ABREGO GARCIA "Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice," Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the time. "A grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee returned a sealed indictment charging him with alien smuggling and conspiracy." However, critics blasted the charges as a political move. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "After weeks of the Trump administration saying they either couldn't or wouldn't return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US, the timing of these charges are clearly designed to cover up their negligence and the fact that the Supreme Court unanimously called them out on the egregious ways they are ignoring due process," the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition said in a statement at the time. "Still, Mr. Abrego Garcia will now be able to have his day in court, which The Constitution guarantees for everyone in our country regardless of citizenship." Print Close URL
Atlantic
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
Trump's Running Tab in the Abrego Garcia Case
The Trump administration's long, belabored campaign to prove that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a gang leader, a terrorist, and an all-around bad guy—not a wrongfully deported Maryland man—has produced some extraordinary legal maneuvers. The administration fought Abrego Garcia's return from El Salvador all the way to the Supreme Court, lost, and eventually brought him back to the United States to slap him with criminal charges it had started investigating after it had already sent him to a foreign prison. But with that criminal case off to a shaky start, the administration is threatening to deport Abrego Garcia again—this time to a country other than his native El Salvador—because the judge has ordered his release while the trial is pending. Having spent months trying to gather evidence against Abrego Garcia, the administration is suggesting it may walk away from it all by sending him to Mexico, Guatemala, or another nation willing to take him. The threat of Abrego Garcia's imminent re-deportation prompted his attorneys to take the extraordinary step today of asking a district court to delay their client's release and keep him locked up for several more weeks to protect him from ICE. 'The irony of this request is not lost on anyone,' his attorneys told the court. 'In a just world, he would not seek to prolong his detention further.' The lawyers accused the government of pretending to want Abrego Garcia to face 'American justice,' while really only wanting to 'convict him in the court of public opinion.' The head-spinning developments of the past several days add to the administration's running tab in a case that has challenged its determination to admit no wrongdoing. The case has produced nearly 57,000 pages of documents; ended the Department of Justice careers of one, perhaps two prosecutors; and prompted the Trump administration to cut deals with convicted felons that protect them from deportation in exchange for testimony. Some of the most remarkable accommodations appear in the transcript of a June 13 pretrial hearing for Abrego Garcia in Tennessee, where the government is trying to convict him of human smuggling. Under cross-examination by defense attorneys, the government's lead investigator, the Department of Homeland Security agent Peter Joseph, told the court that his primary cooperating witness—the source of the most damning testimony—is a twice-convicted felon who had been previously deported five times. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes, who was presiding over the hearing, did a double take. 'Sorry. Deported how many times?' she asked. Joseph, who confirmed the total, said the cooperator has been moved out of prison to a halfway house and is now awaiting a U.S. work permit. He told the court that a second cooperating witness is seeking similar inducements from the government. Trump and his top officials have said for months that their mass-deportation campaign would prioritize the swift removal of criminals from the United States. But in its effort to punish Abrego Garcia—who does not have a criminal record—the administration is protecting convicted felons from deportation. Other costs include ending the 15-year career of a Department of Justice attorney, Erez Reuveni, who filed a whistleblower claim with Congress this week alleging that he was fired for refusing to go along with unsubstantiated claims, pushed by the White House, that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 gang leader and a terrorist. When Reuveni's superiors told him to sign a legal brief making those claims, he refused, saying he 'didn't sign up to lie' when he became a federal prosecutor. He was suspended seven hours later and fired on April 11. Reuveni's career may not be the only DOJ casualty. Another federal prosecutor, Ben Schrader, the head of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney's office in Nashville, submitted his resignation last month when the government brought Abrego Garcia there to face charges. Schrader, who declined to comment and has not discussed his departure publicly, wrote in a LinkedIn post that 'the only job description I've ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.' As Reuveni and others have pointed out, ICE officials initially recognized that Abrego Garcia had been deported on March 15 due to an ' administrative error.' His removal from the country was in violation of a 2019 order protecting him from being sent to El Salvador, which he fled at age 16, after a U.S. immigration judge found that he was likely to be attacked by gangs. At that point, the Trump administration could have brought Abrego Garcia back and deported him to another country, or reopened his case to try to strip him of his protected status. But Trump, Vice President J. D. Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the White House aide Stephen Miller, and other administration officials dug in and insisted there was no error. They declared that Abrego Garcia would never come back and never go free in the United States. They launched an all-of-government campaign to make the case about his character, not his due-process rights. How the Trump administration flipped on Kilmar Abrego Garcia Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, told me in a statement that Abrego Garcia 'is a terrorist illegal alien gang member.' Those who defend him 'should take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves if they really want to side with this heinous illegal criminal,' she said, 'simply because they dislike President Trump.' 'If the answer is yes, they need to seek help,' Jackson added. 'The American people elected President Trump to hold criminals like Abrego Garcia accountable.' But as attorneys for the Justice Department put it in a court filing Wednesday: 'This is no typical case.' Not one, but two, overlapping cases will determine Abrego Garcia's fate. The first is the civil lawsuit that Abrego Garcia's wife, a U.S. citizen, filed in district court in Maryland in March, which seeks his release. The Trump administration opened a second case when it brought Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador earlier this month to face criminal charges in Tennessee. The charges stem from a 2022 highway stop in which Abrego Garcia was pulled over in a Chevrolet Suburban by officers who said he'd been driving 70 miles per hour in a 65-miles-per-hour zone. Police said there were nine passengers in the vehicle and no luggage, raising suspicions of smuggling. Abrego Garcia told officers he was driving construction workers from St. Louis to Maryland on behalf of his boss. The highway-patrol officers reported the incident to federal authorities, but Abrego Garcia was not charged and allowed to continue the journey. Police-bodycam footage of the stop was obtained and released by the Trump administration as it called him a 'human trafficker' and later alleged, citing unnamed cooperating witnesses, that Abrego Garcia transported thousands of migrants during smuggling trips across the United States as part of a conspiracy dating back to 2016 that earned him roughly $100,000 a year. Joseph, the Homeland Security investigator, said cooperating witnesses told him more: that Abrego Garcia transported guns and narcotics, that he sexually abused younger female passengers in his care, and that he routinely endangered underage minors, including his own children, whom he left sitting without seat belts on the floor of the vehicle during lengthy trips from Texas to Maryland. The government made its claims to convince Judge Holmes that Abrego Garcia should remain in federal custody while awaiting his criminal trial. Holmes was not swayed. The defense attorneys representing Abrego Garcia pointed out that the government was relying on stories transmitted through multiple levels of hearsay—claims made outside court, not under oath—by cooperating witnesses seeking some benefit from the government. 'You've got agents going to jails and prisons around the United States right now trying to talk to people who you think might know something about Mr. Abrego?' the federal public defender Dumaka Shabazz asked Joseph, the investigator. 'They have done it through the course of the investigation, yes, sir,' Joseph answered. Shabazz told the court that the first cooperator, 'despite all of his deportations, his criminal history, being the criminal mastermind behind a transport business,' was 'chilling at the halfway house.' 'He's not in jail. He's not getting deported. He's living his life right here in the United States of America. But he sounds like the exact type of person that this government should be wanting to deport.' Holmes largely agreed, issuing a decision Sunday denying the government's attempt to keep Abrego Garica locked up. Her decision did not seem to bode well for the evidence and testimony the government is preparing against Abrego Garcia. Holmes said she gave 'little weight to this hearsay testimony' of the top cooperating witness, whom she called 'a two-time, previously-deported felon, and acknowledged ringleader of a human smuggling operation.' Holmes wrote that she considered the hearsay statements of the second cooperator no more reliable. Furthermore, she said the testimony and statements 'defy common sense,' because she did not believe the claims that Abrego Garcia drove thousands of miles every week with his children—two of whom have autism—sitting on the floor. Another federal judge in Tennessee decided on Wednesday that Abrego Garcia should not remain in criminal custody. District Court Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, who is overseeing the criminal case, said the government had largely failed to prove he was a flight risk or a threat to the community. The Trump administration made clear that as soon as Abrego Garcia was released, ICE could immediately take him back into custody. Then it played a new card, warning that ICE could try to deport Abrego Garcia before the criminal case goes to trial. By threatening to deport Abrego Garcia again, the government was pressuring his legal team and the judge to agree to his continued detention. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was never coming back. Then he did. Crenshaw tried to shift responsibility from his courtroom back to the administration, saying the Justice Department needed to convey its deportation concerns to DHS, which oversees ICE, not him. 'If the Government finds this case to be as high priority as it argues here, it is incumbent upon it to ensure that Abrego is held accountable for the charges in the Indictment,' Crenshaw wrote. 'If the Department of Justice and DHS cannot do so, that speaks for itself.' egotiations over where Abrego Garcia should go next ping-ponged through the courts yesterday, as his lawyers reacted to the administration saying one thing in court and other things publicly. At first, Abrego Garcia's attorneys in Maryland asked the district court to have him transferred there while he awaits the Tennessee criminal trial. 'Absent order from this Court, the Government will likely shuttle Abrego Garcia elsewhere,' they wrote. The attorneys said the government's public statements 'leave little doubt about its plan: remove Abrego Garcia to El Salvador once more.' The last time the government detained Abrego Garcia for deportation, they noted, it sent him to detention facilities in Louisiana and Texas, a move they said was part of a 'pattern' in which the administration sends detainees to those states in anticipation that the more conservative federal courts in that circuit are likelier to side with the government. The administration's position became even more muddled after a Justice Department attorney told the court in Maryland that the administration was indeed planning to deport Abrego Garcia if he's released from custody but would send him to a country other than El Salvador. Abrego Garcia's 2019 protections—the ones the Trump administration violated—prevent his deportation only to El Salvador. The Trump administration has secured agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and other countries around the region to take back deportees from other nations. The rushed, blundering effort to send deportees to third countries Jackson, the White House spokesperson, said on social media last night that the Department of Justice threat to deport Abrego Garcia was 'fake news' and that the criminal case in Tennessee would go forward. 'He will face the full force of the American justice system - including serving time in American prison for the crimes he's committed,' Jackson wrote. In response to the mixed messages and distrust of the government's intentions, Abrego Garcia's lawyers wrote today that they would rather keep him in jail than trust the administration not to deport him. 'When Mr. Abrego revealed the weaknesses in that case—securing the pretrial release to which he is entitled—the government threatened to remove him to a third country,' they wrote. Government attorneys said they intend to 'see this case to resolution,' a message echoed by White House officials. But if Abrego Garcia were poised to walk out of detention and reunite with his family as news cameras rolled, those involved know the administration could be tempted to do something drastic, even if it meant ditching their own case. 'Anything is possible,' an attorney who is tracking the case but did not want to be named told me. 'It seems clear they are committed to not allowing him to be at liberty during the case.'
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Abrego Garcia asks to delay release from jail amid Trump threats of deportation
Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia have asked that he remain in a Tennessee jail for several more weeks after the Trump administration said it plans to swiftly deport him to a third country if he is released. The Friday filing from Abrego Garcia's team in his Tennessee criminal case comes after prosecutors told a Maryland judge Thursday they would plan to deport the man to a country other than El Salvador if he was released from custody. 'Because we cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue by the DOJ, we respectfully request to delay the issuance of the release order,' the attorneys wrote, saying the Justice Department must 'provide reliable information concerning its intentions.' Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to a megaprison in El Salvador despite a 2019 order from an immigration court judge barring his removal to his home country. Abrego Garcia spent months in the Salvadoran prison system despite multiple court orders directing the Trump administration to facilitate his return. He was brought back to the U.S. earlier this month as the Justice Department announced it would bring human trafficking charges against Abrego Garcia stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. A Tennessee judge ordered Abrego Garcia be released during the trial, finding he was not a flight risk or a public safety threat. In Thursday's court hearing in Maryland, prosecutors said they planned to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country other than El Salvador, though they said such plans were 'not imminent.' However, Abrego Garcia's lawyers noted in comments to The Associated Press that the Justice Department said Abrego Garcia would first face trial before being deported. 'The irony of this request is not lost on anyone. After illegally removing Mr. Abrego to El Salvador, the government retrieved him, brought him to this District, and indicted him on baseless charges. Mr. Abrego has spent the last two weeks contesting his unlawful detention under the Bail Reform Act. In a just world, he would not seek to prolong his detention further,' attorneys for Abrego Garcia wrote. 'And yet the government—a government that has, at all levels, told the American people that it is bringing Mr. Abrego back home to the United States to face 'American justice' —apparently has little interest in actually bringing this case to trial. Instead, it has chosen to bring Mr. Abrego back only to convict him in the court of public opinion, including with respect to allegations found nowhere in the actual charges.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Los Angeles Times
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia ask judge to keep him in jail over deportation concerns
NASHVILLE — Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia asked a federal judge in Tennessee on Friday to delay his release from jail because of 'contradictory statements' by President Trump's administration over whether he'll be deported upon release. A federal judge in Nashville has been preparing to release Abrego Garcia to await trial on human smuggling charges. But she's been holding off over concerns that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would swiftly detain him and try to deport him again. Abrego Garcia's attorneys are now asking the judge to continue to detain him following statements by Trump administration officials 'because we cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue by' the Justice Department. 'The irony of this request is not lost on anyone,' the attorneys wrote. Abrego Garcia, a construction worker who had been living in Maryland, became a flashpoint over Trump's hard-line immigration policies when he was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March. Facing mounting pressure and a Supreme Court order, Trump's Republican administration returned him this month to face the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called 'preposterous.' In a response to the request by Abrego Garcia's attorneys on Friday, acting U.S. Atty. Rob McGuire agreed to delaying Abrego Garcia's release. He reiterated his stance that Abrego Garcia should remain in jail before trial and that he lacks jurisdiction over ICE, stating that he has no way to prevent Abrego Garcia's deportation. Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin told the Associated Press on Thursday that the department intends to try Abrego Garcia on the smuggling charges before it moves to deport him, stating that Abrego Garcia 'has been charged with horrific crimes, including trafficking children, and will not walk free in our country again.' Hours earlier, Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn told a federal judge in Maryland that the U.S. government plans to deport Abrego Garcia to a 'third country' that isn't El Salvador. Guynn said there was no timeline for the deportation plans. Abrego Garcia's attorneys wrote in their filing on Friday that Guynn's statements were the 'first time the government has represented, to anyone, that it intended not to deport Mr. Abrego back to El Salvador following a trial on these charges, but to deport him to a third country immediately.' The filing by Abrego Garcia's lawyers also cited a post on X on Thursday from White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson: 'Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States to face trial for the egregious charges against him,' Jackson stated. 'He will face the full force of the American justice system — including serving time in American prison for the crimes he's committed.' Abrego Garcia's attorneys wrote Friday the Trump administration brought Abrego Garcia back 'only to convict him in the court of public opinion.' 'In a just world, he would not seek to prolong his detention further,' his attorneys wrote. 'And yet the government — a government that has, at all levels, told the American people that it is bringing Mr. Abrego back home to the United States to face 'American justice' — apparently has little interest in actually bringing this case to trial.' Abrego Garcia's attorneys have asked the judge to delay his release until a July 16 court hearing, which will consider a request by prosecutors to revoke Abrego Garcia's release order while he awaits trial. Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty on June 13 to smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify his mistaken expulsion to a notorious prison in El Salvador. When the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia in March, it violated a U.S. immigration judge's order in 2019 that barred his expulsion to his native country. The immigration judge had found that Abrego Garcia faced a credible threat from gangs that had terrorized him and his family. The human smuggling charges pending against Abrego Garcia stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee, during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers without luggage. U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville wrote in a ruling Sunday that federal prosecutors failed to show that Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or a danger to the community. During a court hearing Wednesday, Holmes set specific conditions for Abrego Garcia's release that included him living with his brother, a U.S. citizen, in Maryland. But she held off on releasing him over concerns that prosecutors can't prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting him. Finley and Loller write for the Associated Press. Finley reported from Norfolk, Va.
Mint
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Mint
Fearing Deportation, Abrego Garcia Asks to Stay in Jail for Now
(Bloomberg) -- Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador and then brought back to the US on criminal charges, asked a judge to delay his release from jail for fear of being deported again before trial. The request comes after a lawyer for the Trump administration told a separate federal court on Thursday that the government intended to deport Abrego Garcia to his native El Salvador again, or to a third country, when he was released from custody and before he could be tried on human smuggling charges. Hours later, the Justice Department told the Associated Press it intends to prosecute him on the charges before deporting him, Abrego Garcia's lawyers said. 'Because DOJ has made directly contradictory statements on this issue in the last 18 hours, and because we cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue by the DOJ, we respectfully request to delay the issuance of the release order' until a July 16 hearing, they wrote to US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville on Friday. Holmes directed the government to respond today. The case has become a lightning rod for President Donald Trump's immigration policy, under which the administration has increased deportations of undocumented migrants. Abrego Garcia was taken into immigration custody in March and wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran prison. The Supreme Court in April ordered the administration to facilitate his return, after the US acknowledged that a prior court order had barred his deportation to El Salvador because he could be in danger there. But the government brought Abrego Garcia back to the US to face federal charges that he illegally transported undocumented immigrants. In announcing the charges, Attorney General Pam Bondi said an investigation had determined that he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13 — a claim he denies — and a 'danger to our community.' The Justice Department didn't immediately reply to an email seeking comment on Friday's filing. Abrego Garcia's lawyers told Holmes their client had spent the last two weeks contesting his detention and the 'sham' case against him. They said they had been seeking his release before trial, until the government described its intentions. 'The irony of this request is not lost on anyone,' they said in their filing. 'After illegally removing Mr. Abrego to El Salvador, the government retrieved him, brought him to this district and indicted him on baseless charges.' They said 'in a just world, he would not seek to prolong his detention further.' The criminal case is US v. Abrego Garcia, 25-cr-115, US District Court, Middle District of Tennessee (Nashville). More stories like this are available on
