In early June, Attorney General Pam Bondi unveiled the indictment of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant mistakenly deported to El Salvador, with a pronouncement: “This is what American justice looks like.”
She predicted he would be easily convicted.
On Sunday night, 16 days later, a federal magistrate judge gave a far different assessment of the evidence presented so far: The department’s case had serious problems, relied heavily on deals with multiple informants, included dubious claims about his actions that bordered on “physical impossibility” and was rife with hearsay testimony.
The judge, Barbara D. Holmes, ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia to be released, but conceded he was likely to be detained for immigration violations as his case moves through the courts.
The decision to deny the department’s request to keep Mr. Abrego Garcia behind bars was hardly the final word about the criminal prosecution, nor was it a comprehensive or final reckoning about guilt or innocence. It was, nonetheless, the first time the charges have been subjected to judicial scrutiny and a blow to the government’s core contention that Mr. Abrego Garcia poses a danger to the community.
Although Judge Holmes did not mention Ms. Bondi by name, her 51-page ruling represented a rejection of efforts by top administration officials to publicly discredit Mr. Abrego Garcia by suggesting that he was a prominent member of the violent street gang MS-13, and that he trafficked women and minors.
Judicial rebukes have become commonplace in a conflict-courting administration run by a president intent on turning legal proceedings, including four recent criminal cases, into political mud fights.
Ms. Bondi, a longtime political ally of Mr. Trump’s who has shown a willingness to execute his directives without fuss or pushback, has adopted that approach. She has disregarded departmental norms to level lurid public accusations at Mr. Abrego Garcia without first detailing evidence in court filings, or through the sworn testimony of federal law enforcement officials.
The attorney general’s actions are in line with what her boss wants. Mr. Trump made his preferences clear earlier this month when Mr. Abrego Garcia was brought back to U.S. soil, describing the process of indicting and repatriating him not as an act of law but almost as a way to publicly shame him.
“The man has a horrible past,” Mr. Trump told reporters, “and I could see a decision being made, ‘Bring him back, show everybody how horrible this guy is.’”
The attorney general has sought to justify the deportation of Mr. Abrego Garcia by portraying him as a public menace, even as government officials acknowledged that he wound up in a notorious El Salvador prison in March because of an “administrative error.” Ms. Bondi, speaking during a brief appearance at the department on June 6 to announce the unsealing of the indictment, accused Mr. Abrego Garcia of trading “the innocence of minor children for profit” and of abusing “undocumented alien females.”
But Judge Holmes cast doubt on those accusations in her decision, writing that the allegations came from “at least three, if not four or more, levels of hearsay” and carried “no weight” legally.
“That the level of hearsay cannot even be determined renders the evidence patently unreliable,” she added.
Ms. Bondi’s assertions were based on information presented in a memo from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee arguing for Mr. Abrego Garcia’s detention. Such documents require a lower standard of evidentiary proof than a criminal indictment, according to Justice Department officials.
Chad Gilmartin, a spokesman for the department, said Ms. Bondi believed the hearsay evidence, while not conclusive, suggested Mr. Abrego Garcia posed a serious threat to public safety.
“It would be very concerning,” he said, if having “allegations involving harm to minor children no longer makes a defendant a danger to the community.”
Judge Holmes also took issue with the government’s core argument in depicting Mr. Abrego Garcia as a dangerous criminal. She criticized testimony from Peter Joseph, a homeland security agent, who took the stand during a daylong detention hearing a week later, to accuse Mr. Abrego Garcia of trafficking immigrants, including minors.
The evidence presented by prosecutors, she wrote, supported more routine allegations that he was participating in the more common, if still illegal, practice of smuggling undocumented immigrants seeking to relocate to different parts of the country.
“To be clear, the offenses of which Abrego is charged are human smuggling, not human trafficking,” she wrote. “Although ‘smuggling’ and ‘trafficking’ were sometimes used interchangeably during the detention hearing, there is a distinct difference between the two under the law. They are not transposable.”
The ruling, issued late Sunday, did little to divert the administration from its unyielding position on the case.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, called the Salvadoran man “a dangerous criminal illegal alien” in a social media post after Judge Holmes released her opinion.
“We have said it for months, and it remains true to this day,” Ms. McLaughlin added. “He will never go free on American soil.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s new legal team, which includes a former prosecutor from the same U.S. attorney’s office that filed the indictment against him, seems to be highly aware of these extrajudicial attacks against their client.
And on Monday, they shot back at Ms. McLaughlin, castigating her in a new court filing that asked Judge Holmes not to put her order releasing the defendant on hold as the government appeals it.
The filing pointed out that prosecutors had gone to great lengths to do favors for some of the cooperating witnesses who had helped them secure the charges against Mr. Abrego Garcia. It even turned the knife an extra twist, noting that the favors were connected to helping the witnesses avoid the consequences of their own illegal immigration.
“It is notable that, in its attempt to keep Mr. Abrego behind bars, the government has already promised leniency to three people in their immigration proceedings, including the leader and a member of a domestic smuggling operation,” the lawyers wrote. “The former has been deported five times and has two prior felony convictions, and yet the government has granted him deferred action on deportation in exchange for his testimony, early release from prison to a halfway house, and is likely to grant him work authorization.”
“All to ensure,” the lawyers added, “that Mr. Abrego ‘will never go free on American soil.’”
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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