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)(Sipa via AP Images).
On the same day that the DOJ in one courtroom apparently reversed course on its stated intent to prosecute Kilmar Abrego Garcia before deporting him to Liberia or elsewhere, the federal judge separately handling his criminal human smuggling case threatened U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with sanctions if they continue to pose “a clear and present danger,” through their words, to the defendant”s right to a fair trial.
The latest developments in the Abrego Garcia saga are whiplash-inducing, as a DOJ attorney told Maryland U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis on Monday that, unless blocked by a court, the Trump administration would like to send the wrongly deported Salvadoran citizen to Liberia on Halloween.
An incredulous Xinis was reportedly not buying the government’s claim that it wasn’t sure what the implications would be for the Tennessee criminal case, pointing out that a criminal trial for allegedly “smuggling illegal aliens” wouldn’t be doable in Abrego Garcia’s absence.
As Law&Crime has reported, and as the Barack Obama-appointed judge reportedly noted, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw has also set an evidentiary hearing for early November to test Abrego Garcia’s claims that the DOJ’s human smuggling prosecution was vindictively brought in retaliation for the “embarrassment” his habeas corpus civil lawsuit caused the government.
Whether Abrego Garcia will be removed from the U.S. before the Nov. 4 hearing remains to be seen, but in the meantime, Crenshaw issued some stern warnings for top executive branch officials who have made “troubling” out-of-court statements about the defendant.
An opinion and order from Crenshaw, also an Obama appointee, made clear that he would enforce a local rule moving forward 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 there can or will be a trial.
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The judge pointed directly to remarks made by Bondi and Noem, calling those “extrajudicial statements […] troubling, especially where many of them are exaggerated if not simply inaccurate.”
In early June, for instance, Bondi said the defendant played “a significant role in an alien smuggling ring … [that] this was his full-time job, not a contractor … [that] [h]e was a smuggler of humans and children and women … [and that] [h]e made over 100 trips,” comments in potential violation of the local rule because they “offer[ed] an opinion ‘as to the evidence in the case,'” the judge said.
Then in August, Noem branded the defendant an “MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator,” a statement that was again “contrary” to the local rule, Crenshaw continued.
In his Monday order, the judge was clear that acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire, within two days, “shall provide a copy of this Order and Memorandum Opinion to all” DOJ and DHS employees, including Bondi and Noem.
“Employees of DOJ and DHS are hereby on notice that they are prohibited from making any ‘extrajudicial statement (other than a quotation from or reference to public records) that the [individual] knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by public communication that will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter, including especially that will interfere with a fair trial,'” the judge said, threatening sanctions for violations of the order.
