Thread: Kilmar Abrego Garcia asks for GAG ORDER against AG Bondi and DHS Secretary Noem

'Vitriolic and prejudicial statements': Kilmar Abrego Garcia moves for sanctions after Trump admin 'repeatedly violated' court-issued gag order, motion says

Colin Kalmbacher
Dec 20th, 2025, 3:35 pm
4 comments



Left to right: Kilmar Abrego Garcia attends a protest rally at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025 (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough), Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference at the Nashville International Airport, Thursday, July 17, 2025, in Nashville, Tennessee (AP Photo/George Walker IV), and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks at a press briefing with U.S. President Donald Trump in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House in Washington, DC on Friday, June 27, 2025 (Annabelle Gordon/Sipa USA/AP Images).

The Trump administration should be sanctioned over extrajudicial statements that have damaged Kilmar Abrego Garcia's right to a fair trial, a motion filed in Tennessee federal court on Friday alleges.

In the 14-page motion for sanctions, the Maryland man's attorneys are asking U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, Jr., a Barack Obama appointee, to first get to the bottom of the latest dispute.
Specifically, the motion asks for an order forcing the government to disclose information about "multiple highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and false statements" allegedly made by Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino during appearances on Fox News and NewsMax.
The request comes as part of Abrego Garcia's criminal case on human smuggling charges out of the Middle District of Tennessee.

In late August, the man whose case assumed outsized importance and became a flashpoint in the second Trump administration's immigration agenda asked Crenshaw to issue a gag order against several officials – and especially U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem.
By late October, the court more or less ruled in the defendant's favor; an opinion and order made clear the court would enforce a local rule that "prohibits DOJ and DHS employees from making extrajudicial statements that will 'have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing' Abrego's right to a 'fair trial,'" assuming a trial occurs.
Now, Abrego Garcia says the government "repeatedly violated" the court's order and the local rule on which it is based with statements that are both "inappropriate and prejudicial."
"The latest violation is flagrant, and sanctions and other case-related relief are warranted," the sanctions motion reads.

More Law&Crime coverage: 'Affirmatively misled the tribunal': Abrego Garcia judge shreds Trump admin for lying in court about Costa Rica, orders release from ICE

The filing documents the statements in question, at length.
On Dec. 12, Bovino told Fox News host Jesse Watters:

It's too bad that we have these activist judges that legislate from the bench and put MS-13 gang members back out on the streets to harm Americans. That's what we're doing in these American cities, are taking individuals like this, quote, Maryland Dad, out of circulation and putting them back where they need to be, and that's in their country of record.

On Dec. 14, Bovino told NewsMax host Jon Glasgow:

We have an MS-13 gang member walking the streets. As you said, a wife-beater, but also, let's not forget, he was also an alien smuggler. So here's someone that wants immigration relief, he wants to, to leech off the United States, and thinks it's okay to do that. And that Jon, maybe you and I have done something wrong? Wrong answer. When he becomes deportable, he is going to get deported. And he needs to be deported now. That's what you get when you have an extremist judge, or judges, that legislate from the bench. You have MS-13 gang members ready to prey on Americans yet again. And that's the very thing we're trying to stop here with President Trump and Kristi Noem's immigration efforts here in the homeland.

"Bovino's statements are the archetypal problematic statements this Court has prohibited," the motion goes on. "That's unsurprising, because these are the talking points used by the White House and DHS."

The defense motion argues the statements made by the Border Patrol official "go both to Mr. Abrego's character and reputation and to his guilt or innocence in this case" and ultimately "flatly undermined these proceedings by criticizing the judges presiding over Mr. Abrego's criminal and civil cases."

More Law&Crime coverage: DOJ says Abrego Garcia must be detained and can ask for a bond hearing — despite its own policy against immigration bond hearings

Abrego Garcia was infamously part of a summary deportation flight to a prison notorious for torture in El Salvador, but his deportation violated multiple court orders – both specific to him and general to the flight in question.
A DOJ lawyer was sacked after admitting the Trump administration's mistakes and, through a seesawing battle that has gone up the legal ladder all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and back down to various different district courts, Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States, promptly charged with unrelated crimes, and eventually released on bail before being taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) yet again in late August.
Once again, Abrego Garcia has accused Trump's DOJ of compounding the administration's apparently bad behavior.
"The government's refusal to issue a retraction, or even to respond to counsel's correspondence raising Mr. Bovino's statements, evinces their utter disregard for this Court's Order," the sanctions motion goes on. "Although the retraction of an extrajudicial statement 'has only a modest impact on the likelihood of prejudice inquiry, it is considerably more relevant to the issue of willfulness.'"

The motion goes on like this, at length:

Mr. Bovino's statements, which come on the heels of a long line of vitriolic and prejudicial statements on the part of the government, are just the latest in a longstanding pattern of governmental misconduct that jeopardizes Mr. Abrego's right to a fair trial. The jury pool continues to be exposed, within weeks of the current trial date, to highly prejudicial and false claims about Mr. Abrego. Mr. Bovino's statements are also likely to influence witness testimony by causing witnesses to fear that presenting any testimony that does not align with the government's theory of the case will put them at risk of retribution.

To that end, Abrego Garcia's attorneys are asking Crenshaw to force the government to explain whether Bovino was made aware of the gag order by the DOJ, who authorized Bovino to speak about the case, and "what guidance that person or persons gave Mr. Bovino about what he could and could not say on national television, as well as any and all communications between counsel for the government and Mr. Bovino or DHS regarding Mr. Bovino's statements, including any attempts to obtain a retraction or apology, so that the Court may determine the appropriate course of action."

'Vitriolic and prejudicial statements': Kilmar Abrego Garcia moves for sanctions after Trump admin 'repeatedly violated' court-issued gag order, motion says | Law & Crime

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ICE barred from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia through Christmas holiday

Story by Arthur Jones II, Armando Garcia
• 2h • 2 min read

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is barred from re-detaining Salvadoran native Kilmar Abrego Garcia through the Christmas holiday, the federal judge in his immigration case said Monday.In a hearing in Maryland, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis extended, through the holiday, the temporary restraining order that keeps Abrego Garcia out of federal custody while the government attempts to deport him to Liberia or another country.

Abrego Garcia was released from immigration detention on Dec. 11 after Judge Xinis found the government had detained him "without lawful authority," in part because he had not been issued a formal order of removal during his immigration proceedings in 2019, when a judge also barred the government from deporting him to his native El Salvador due to his fear of persecution.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is released from immigration detention, his attorney says

Following Abrego Garcia's release, an immigration judge "corrected" the error and added a removal order to his record, finding that it "was erroneously omitted."
At Monday's hearing, Judge Xinis repeatedly pressed the administration’s legal team to answer whether they would detain Abrego Garcia if the restraining order were to be dissolved. The judge stressed she needs documentation properly identifying what the government intends to do with Abrego Garcia and what their reasoning is, in order to ensure that the government won't again detain him without lawful authority.

“Show your work, that's all,” Xinis told the government attorneys. "Give it to me and we don't have to speculate.”
Xinis ordered the government lawyers to issue a submission of facts by Dec. 26, followed by a response from Abrego Garcia’s legal team by Dec. 30, before she can issue a preliminary injunction or dissolve the case.



Jonathan Ernst/Reuters - PHOTO: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, with his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura, departs following a Temporary Restraining Order hearing at the at the federal court house in Greenbelt, Maryland, December 22, 2025.

Abrego Garcia's lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said after the hearing that the Abrego Garcia family has endured a roller coaster of emotions, but the fight is not over.
“It's just been one earthquake after another,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “The sword is still hanging -- very much hanging.”

Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison, despite the 2019 court order barring his removal to that country, after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which he denies.
He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, after which Judge Xinis released him from ICE detention while he awaits trial. He is scheduled to go to trial on the Tennessee charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty, in January.
On Friday, his attorneys filed a motion seeking sanctions against the Trump administration for allegedly violating a court order that barred officials from making extrajudicial statements that could impact the case. After Abrego Garcia's release from ICE detention, Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino called him an "alien smuggler" and "wife beater" on national TV, his attorneys said.

ICE barred from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia through Christmas holiday

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'Muzzling an entire agency': Abrego Garcia's 'wild' bid to sanction Trump admin over non-lawyer's Fox News remarks has 'grave' implications, DOJ says

Story by Matt Naham
• 3h • 5 min read



The Dec. 12, 2025, Fox News segment and Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino's appearance at the center of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's sanctions demand (Fox News).

The Department of Justice rejected Kilmar Abrego Garcia's sanctions demand by telling the wrongfully deported Salvadoran man, later accused of human smuggling, to take a look in the mirror before complaining about extrajudicial statements.
In a Monday filing in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, the government backed Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino following remarks he made roughly two weeks ago on Fox News and Newsmax, comments that did not name Abrego Garcia but which were, based on context, clearly about him — hence the criminal defendant's motion for sanctions.

Later that same day, Bovino separately joined Fox News' Jesse Watters to react, as the network's chyrons read "Kilmar's Home for the Holidays," "Kilmar Wants to Fight, Fight, Fight," and "Kilmar's Back & He Brought the Bulls Hat," which Watters has said "means you're MS-13."
During the appearance, Bovino, one of the most recognizable faces if not "the face" of the Trump administration's deportation operation on the ground, stated that it's "too bad that we have these activist judges that legislate from the bench and put MS-13 gang members back out on the streets to harm Americans."
"That's what we're doing in these American cities, are taking individuals like this, quote, Maryland Dad, out of circulation and putting them back where they need to be, and that's in their country of record," Bovino added, not naming Abrego Garcia but mocking the "Maryland Dad" description of him.
Two days later, Bovino made similar comments on Newsmax to host Jon Glasgow and the viewing audience:

We have an MS-13 gang member walking the streets. As you said, a wife-beater, but also, let's not forget, he was also an alien smuggler. So here's someone that wants immigration relief, he wants to, to leech off the United States, and thinks it's okay to do that. And that Jon, maybe you and I have done something wrong? Wrong answer. When he becomes deportable, he is going to get deported. And he needs to be deported now. That's what you get when you have an extremist judge, or judges, that legislate from the bench. You have MS-13 gang members ready to prey on Americans yet again. And that's the very thing we're trying to stop here with President Trump and Kristi Noem's immigration efforts here in the homeland.

Garcia's sanctions motion was filed five days later, asking U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, Jr., a Barack Obama appointee who has found the defendant made a "prima facie showing of vindictiveness" by the government, to punish the Trump administration for Bovino's "highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and false statements" on cable news.

The request was a callback to Crenshaw's prior warnings to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem about a local rule that "prohibits DOJ and DHS employees from making extrajudicial statements that will 'have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing' Abrego's right to a 'fair trial.'"
Bovino is such an employee, given that Border Patrol is part of DHS, and thus sanctions are "warranted," Abrego Garcia's lawyers said.
The DOJ has now fired back by slamming the human smuggling defendant's demand as a "grave," misguided, and hypocritical endeavor aimed at "muzzling an entire agency."
"By casting himself as the victim of injustice that he intends to 'keep fighting' while his advocates claim that the present Indictment are 'false charges' and are 'shameful,' the Defendant would do well to keep his own hands clean before claiming that the Government's are somehow dirtied," the DOJ said. "The defense now accuses the Government of violating the Court's order regarding extrajudicial statements and the Local Rule while the Defendant and his advocates are violating them."

The DOJ downplayed Bovino's remarks in multiple ways, noting he "does not have editorial control of news chyrons" and that he did not name Abrego Garcia in the "all of about thirty seconds" of words he uttered on Fox News.
The same was true of the Newsmax segment, the government went on.
"Two days later, the same agent made largely similar comments, critiquing the immigration justice system, reiterated that the Defendant would be deported again if he was ordered deported and, again, did not mention the Defendant by name," the opposition filing continued. "And, in both instances, Mr. Bovino made his remarks only after the Defendant, his lawyers in his civil case, and activists working on his behalf made unduly prejudicial statements at his rally on the steps of the ICE office in Baltimore."
The last line gets to the heart of the DOJ's position, which is that the local rule "does not apply to" Bovino because he is a "non-lawyer in a governmental agency that is not litigating this matter."

But in the event the rule did apply, the government contends, Bovino was simply correcting the record for his "client" in the face of "wild assertions" made by Abrego Garcia, his lawyers and "sympathizers about this prosecution."
If Crenshaw were to punish this activity, it would have "grave" constitutional implications, the DOJ added.
"[H]is statements fall squarely within subsection (a)(3)'s carveout for statements necessary to protect a client from substantial undue prejudice," the filing stated. "And a holding to the contrary would raise grave First Amendment and separation-of-powers concerns by punishing Mr. Bovino for the content of his speech, creating prior constraints, and muzzling an entire agency that does not even have lawyers appearing in this case."
The post 'Muzzling an entire agency': Abrego Garcia's 'wild' attempt to sanction Trump admin over non-lawyer's Fox News remarks has 'grave' implications, DOJ says first appeared on Law & Crime.

'Muzzling an entire agency': Abrego Garcia's 'wild' bid to sanction Trump admin over non-lawyer's Fox News remarks has 'grave' implications, DOJ says

'Untethered from any lawful purpose': Kilmar Abrego Garcia aims to disarm Trump admin's deportation case by using procedural loophole

Story by Colin Kalmbacher
Jan 06 • 4 min read • Updated 2h ago



Inset: Kilmar Abrego Garcia in an undated photo (CASA). Background: President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo/Alex Brandon).

Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia insist the often opaque webs of immigration law are now working in their client's favor by tying the Trump administration's deportation case against him up in knots.
On Monday, in a seven-page filing, Abrego Garcia's counsel moved to disarm the government's deportation case by telling U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis that he will not contest an immigration court decision issued Dec. 11, 2025, in which the Maryland man was "ordered removed" – a decision backdated to Oct. 10, 2019.
The latest volley in the high-profile case comes in direct response to a late 2025 filing by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field officer which staked out several potential statutory authorities under which the government could "re-detain" Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia's legal team says those same statutes actually render "re-detention" unavailable under certain circumstances. And, with the lawyers' Monday filing, those circumstances have now transpired.
In its latest filing, the government said: "[T]he immigration judge's December 11, 2025 decision entering a removal order is not final, and Petitioner has the opportunity to appeal that decision by January 12, 2026." Meanwhile, one underlying statute — which was also quoted by the ICE officer — says, in relevant part: "[A]n alien may be arrested and detained pending a decision on whether the alien is to be removed."
To hear Abrego Garcia's side tell it, the operative word in the statute is "pending." To that end, the statute offers continued immigration detention only if there is temporally-based push-and-pull about an immigration judge's removal decision, the petitioners argue.
The government's latest filing also cites other statutes to make a similar argument and argues that his "detention will be governed" by those laws "until removal proceedings have concluded."
Now Abrego Garcia is dropping his opposition, in a formalistic sense, in a bid to have the removal proceedings shuttered.
"Abrego Garcia has decided to not appeal the immigration judge's December 11 order, and he hereby waives his right to do so," the Monday filing reads. "As a result, that order is final, there are no ongoing removal proceedings, and thus neither § 1225(b)(2) nor § 1226(a) can authorize detention. While Abrego Garcia has serious concerns about the validity of the immigration judge's December 11 order, he waives his right to challenge that order to eliminate any doubt that § 1225(b)(2) or § 1226(a) could apply here."

In other words, Abrego Garcia is no longer contesting the immigration court's deportation order – which Xinis, a Barack Obama appointee, has implicitly and explicitly chosen to ignore anyway.
Also on Dec. 11, 2025, Xinis found that "no such [removal] order exists for Abrego Garcia" and that the federal defendants in the habeas case "never produced an order of removal despite Abrego Garcia hinging much of his jurisdictional and legal arguments on its non-existence."
The judge did, however, acknowledge the bare existence of the document in the context of ICE's own reference to the immigration court.
From the court's earlier ruling, at length:

The ICE Order of Supervision also states that Abrego Garcia was "ordered removed" on October 10, 2019, despite no such order having issued on that date. Instead, the ICE Order of Supervision seems to rely on an "order" issued last night from Immigration Judge Phillip Taylor. The Court does not opine on this newest "order" here. But the Court does note that this "order" was issued nunc pro tunc, effective October 10, 2019.

Abrego Garcia's Monday filing further pushes against his re-detention by noting that he has already been held in custody for six months and that his would-be deportation is still a far-fetched idea.
"If, after six months of post-removal-order detention, a petitioner 'provides good reason to believe that there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future,' then immigration detention becomes unlawful unless the Government proves that removal is reasonably foreseeable," the father of three's attorneys argue, citing a 2001 Supreme Court case on the issue.
To be sure, the Trump administration is still trying to deport Abrego Garcia. But it is barred from doing so in its preferred manner.
By now, the government has repeatedly expressed its intentions to deport Abrego Garcia to African countries, such as Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, or Liberia, even as the plaintiff has expressed a willingness to self-deport to Costa Rica — and even as Costa Rica has repeatedly expressed a desire to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee. The U.S. government has argued that Costa Rica took itself off the table.
In that dimension of the case, Xinis has been withering, describing the Trump administration's in-court efforts with regard to Costa Rica as "affirmatively" misleading the court through "misrepresentation."
And that island nation angle, Abrego Garcia says, is exactly why the foreseeability of his deportation is all but nonexistent.
Again, the plaintiff's latest motion, at length:

Removal is no more foreseeable today than it was when the Court granted Abrego Garcia's habeas petition. Now, as then, there is no viable third country other than Costa Rica. So long as the Government continues its "inexplicable reluctance" to remove Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, he remains in "removable-but-unremovable limbo," With no viable removal country, detention now would not serve any legitimate purpose, but amount to nothing more than detention for detention's sake. Thus, even if there were a statutory justification for detention under § 1225 or § 1226, detaining Abrego Garcia now "cannot be squared with the 'basic purpose' of holding him to effectuate removal."

"To the contrary, such detention untethered from any lawful purpose, would be punitive and violate due process," the motion goes on.
Matt Naham contributed to this report.

'Untethered from any lawful purpose': Kilmar Abrego Garcia aims to disarm Trump admin's deportation case by using procedural loophole

Judge Rules ICE Cannot Re-Detain & Deport Salvadoran Illegal Kilmar Abrego Garcia

by Infowars.com February 18th, 2026 1:54 PM

Trump admin faces another hurdle in the fight to get illegals out of America.



Image Credit: Alex Wong / Staff / Getty

Illegal alien and alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia cannot be detained and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
US District Judge Paula Xinis, of the federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, made the decision following her December ruling that Garcia be released from federal custody amid a protracted immigration battle with the Trump administration.



Kilmar Abrego Garcia cannot be re-detained by U.S. immigration officials, federal judge rules

Xinis argued Garcia already spent enough time in custody when he was deported to El Salvador and was imprisoned for several months, calling it a “wrongful detention.”
He was later detained by ICE a second time in August 2025, just days after a judge released him from custody when he returned to the U.S. from El Salvador to face trial for human smuggling charges in Tennessee based on a 2022 traffic stop.
An attorney representing Garcia commented on Judge Xinis’ ruling, saying, “In her decision today, she recognized that if the government were truly trying to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the United States, they would have sent him to Costa Rica long before today. We hope the government does not appeal this order, and instead finally comes to the table in good faith to work out the details of a removal plan to Costa Rica.”
There is clearly an issue with America’s immigration and judicial system if a federal judge can prohibit a government agency from carrying out its constitutional duty of removing individuals residing in the country illegally.

Judge Rules ICE Cannot Re-Detain & Deport Salvadoran Illegal Kilmar Abrego Garcia