Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia asked a judge on Thursday to bar top Trump administration officials — including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi — from making “baseless public attacks” against their client, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador earlier this year.
The motion was filed in Nashville federal court less than a week after Abrego Garcia was released from pre-trial custody — only to be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and processed for possible deportation just days later. Abrego Garcia is now in the custody of ICE, though a Maryland judge has blocked him from being deported while she reviews the case.
Since Friday, his lawyers say federal officials have “attacked Mr. Abrego in the media in numerous highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and false statements,” which they argue violates his right to a fair trial.
They pointed to a statement by Noem on Friday that called Abrego Garcia an “MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator,” and comments by Bondi on Monday likening Abrego Garcia to “foreign terrorist organizations.”
His lawyers also said the Department of Homeland Security “has posted a litany of inflammatory statements on its official X account,” including allegations that Abrego Garcia belonged to the gang MS-13 — which he has vehemently denied.
“The government’s ongoing barrage of prejudicial statements severely threaten—and perhaps have already irrevocably impaired—the ability to try this case at all—in any venue,” the motion said. “If the government is allowed to continue in this way, it will taint any conceivable jury pool by exposing the entire country to irrelevant, prejudicial, and false claims about Mr. Abrego.”
They also argued the government could make it harder for Abrego Garcia to call defense witnesses, since any potential witnesses could worry that they’ll be attacked, too.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers want a judge to order “all DOJ and DHS officials involved in this case,” including Bondi and Noem, to stop making comments that could prejudice the case.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ordered all lawyers in the case to abide by local criminal court rules, after Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued the government had violated a rule against making public statements that could prejudice the case.
A DHS official said in response to the filing: “If Kilmar Abrego Garcia did not want to be mentioned by the Secretary of Homeland Security, then he should have not entered our country illegally and committed heinous crimes.”
“The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart, yet they continue to peddle his sob story. We hear far too much about gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims,” the official said.
CBS News has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
The request came as Abrego Garcia both awaits a criminal prosecution for allegedly transporting undocumented immigrants from near the U.S.-Mexico border to elsewhere in the country — which he has denied — and faces possible deportation to East Africa.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who entered the U.S. illegally in 2011, was arrested by ICE in March, deported to El Salvador and held in prison for months — even though an immigration judge had barred him from being sent to El Salvador due to a fear of gang persecution.
Federal officials acknowledged Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was an “administrative error,” but the Trump administration publicly railed against him, accusing him of gang membership and asserting that he should not return to the United States. He was eventually flown to Tennessee in June and jailed on human smuggling charges.
A judge in Tennessee ruled in June that he should be let out of detention while awaiting a trial set for January. Administration officials suggested that if he left pre-trial detention, he could face deportation again, possibly to a country other than El Salvador.
He was ultimately let out of jail on Friday, and on Monday, ICE detained him. His lawyers were informed that he could be deported to Uganda.
Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has ruled that Abrego Garcia cannot be deported until at least early October, as she considers a habeas corpus petition. His lawyers say he also plans to seek asylum in the United States.
Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have asked for his criminal charges to be tossed out, calling the prosecution “vindictive and selective.”
Joe Walsh is a senior editor for digital politics at CBS News. Joe previously covered breaking news for Forbes and local news in Boston.
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