The Trump administration has orchestrated an absolute miracle. After U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered them to bring him back, they couldn’t. After the Supreme Court ordered—in a 9-0 decision—that they had to follow the court order from Judge Xinis and bring Kikmar Abrego Garcia home, they didn’t. The Supreme Court ruling was back in April 2025. DOJ lawyers continuously asserted that they just could not bring him back to the U.S. from El Salvador.
They couldn’t get him back, they said, even though he was deported by mistake (they also said, but that DOJ lawyer was fired for telling the truth.) Judge Paula Xinis was just about to hold the Trump administration in contempt when suddenly, a miracle! Kilmar Abrego Garcia is home in the United States. The first time he’s on camera, I hope he holds up his fist to show there are no “MS13” tattoos on his knuckles (yeah, I’m petty).
This DOJ isn’t going to admit to a mistake, however, so they will do whatever it takes to make the initial deportation to CECOT in El Salvador look warranted and necessary. They’re doing that with Attorney General Pam Bondi holding a press conference about how much of a horrible, terrifying criminal and gang member Abrego Garcia is. She made false statement after false statement, beginning with her initial statement that a grand jury had convicted him on charges.
WRONG. A grand jury doesn’t convict anyone. They determine whether prosecutors have enough information/evidence to pursue certain charges against someone. Then they charge them in a court of law where a judge and/or jury will find the defendant guilty or not guilty.
We Brought Abrego Garcia Home to Charge Him With Stuff
The rest of the lies Bondi told were in the form of personal attacks meant to make Abrego Garcia look like a dangerous criminal. She called him things like, “gangbanger,” “murderer,” “human trafficker,” “child trafficker,” and “criminal,” among other words used to frighten American citizens into giving the administration a pass on denying due process to people. If they can get the public to accept stripping this right from immigrants, they can start doing it to the American citizens on Trump’s retribution/revenge “hit list.”
This video provides details about the Maryland father’s “warm welcome” back to the States.
The Silver Lining—Reason for Hope
There’s a podcast/YouTube show from MeidasTouch called Legal AF where active, experienced attorneys discuss cases that are at “the intersection of law and politics.” I watched the breaking episode after Pam Bondi’s disgusting press conference and I’m so glad I did. I was feeling pretty hopeless about the government charging Abrego Garcia with all of the crimes Bondi had mentioned.
Luckily, the Legal AF host, Michael Popok, had the actual court documents from the DOJ. The charging document said nothing about all of the accusations Bondi spewed into the microphone. The only actual charge in the court filing was what he had been pulled over for in Tennessee.
The host said there are strikes against their case in terms of evidence: Abrego Garcia wasn’t charged with anything during the traffic stop. The officer gave him a warning and sent him on his way. The evidence for human trafficking, they claim, is the fact that the people in the van with him didn’t have suitcases. That’s actually evidence that Abrego Garcia was telling the truth and he was driving them, in the construction company’s van, to a job site. They would have had suitcases if they had just arrived in the country or relocating from one state to another.
The other issue is the fact that they got their information from a jailhouse informant. If the DOJ walks into a prison waving around a promise of immunity in exchange for information, people will say anything the DOJ wants in order to be freed. The testimony they have from the informant isn’t trustworthy. Period.
In the end, the DOJ’s charges against him are flimsy and nothing close to what Pam Bondi described in her press conference, and that should make us all feel a little less defeated about them finally bringing Abrego Garcia home.
