U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested MS-13 associate Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Monday and set the stage for his deportation to Uganda.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to Blaze News, “President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator, to terrorize American citizens any longer.”
‘The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart.’
But Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland — a judge former President Barack Obama nominated — swiftly intervened to prevent the removal of the Salvadoran national. Xinis told the Trump administration it was “absolutely forbidden” from deporting Garcia, then issued a temporary restraining order to this effect.
On Thursday, the MS-13 associate asked a different Obama judge to prevent Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and all of the officials in their respective agencies from discussing his sordid history.
“Since Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was released from pretrial custody last Friday, officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security — and even the White House — have attacked Mr. Abrego in the media in numerous highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and false statements,” Garcia’s attorneys noted in the request to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, an Obama-nominated judge who sought Abrego’s release in July.
Garcia and his legal team were especially prickled by the suggestion that he is “a known MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, wife beater, and child predator.”
While Garcia’s attorneys complained that such claims were “baseless,” it’s clear the Trump administration did not create the allegations out of whole cloth.
Justice Department attorneys indicated earlier this year that in March 2019, Garcia was summoned to appear in removal proceedings. During a bond hearing, ICE stated that a confidential informant flagged Garcia as an active member of MS-13. The illegal alien’s bond was denied with the court reportedly finding “that Abrego Garcia was a danger to the community.”
When Garcia appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, an immigration judge determined in April 2019 that “the determination that the Respondent is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record.”
As with Garcia’s MS-13 link, the domestic abuser claim also did not appear out of thin air.
Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez, sought domestic violence protective orders against him in 2020 and 2021. Vasquez alleged in her 2021 protective order petition that Garcia punched her, ripped off her shirt, and both scratched and bruised her.
The human trafficking allegation that Garcia wants DHS and DOJ officials to refrain from publicly mentioning is fleshed out in his federal grand jury indictment which accuses him of conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.
The indictment alleges that Garcia conspired to bring illegal aliens — adults and children alike — into the U.S. from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere from 2016 until this year. He allegedly made over 100 trips over the course of this alleged human smuggling campaign.
“Over the course of the conspiracy, the co-conspirators knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no known authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 member and associates,” said the indictment.
As for the “child predator” allegation, Bondi told reporters in June that one of Garcia’s alleged co-conspirators claimed that he not only “abused undocumented alien females” who were “under his control while transporting them throughout our country” but allegedly “solicited nude photographs and videos of a minor.”
Bondi, Noem, and the White House’s repeated references to these and other skeletons in Garcia’s closet evidently infuriated him, but Garcia’s attorneys said in their Thursday request that the “pièce de resistance” was the DHS’ repost of this White House meme:
Garcia’s attorneys claimed in the request that “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.”
His attorneys asked for a gag order prohibiting all DHS and DOJ officials involved in Garcia’s case — and all officials in their supervisory chain — “from making extrajudicial comments that pose a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing this proceeding.”
A DHS official told the Hill, “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 DHS official continued, “Once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend this criminal illegal MS-13 gang member who is an alleged human trafficker, domestic abuser, and child predator. The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart, yet they continue to peddle his sob story.”
The Hill indicated that the DOJ declined to comment.
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