A federal judge scolded the Homeland Security and Justice Departments for comments its officials made about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant whose case captured national headlines earlier this year amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.
Garcia’s lawyers asked the judge to prohibit the DOJ and DHS from making inflammatory comments that could hurt his chance at a fair trial. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. ruled that a special order is not necessary because a local rule already limits comments that could unfairly prejudice a case.
Waverly explained that issuing such an order “would be an extraordinary step,” but is “unnecessary here.”
Crenshaw told the government’s attorneys to share the opinion with DOJ and DHS leadership to ensure that they will not make future statements that “pose a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing this proceeding” and cautioned that violating this rule would create a “clear and present danger” to Garcia’s right to a fair trial.
However, Judge Crenshaw criticized agency officials for making “extrajudicial statements that are troubling, especially where many of them are exaggerated if not simply inaccurate.”
NEW: A federal judge slammed DHS Secretary Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi for publicly attacking Kilmar Abrego Garcia in “exaggerated” and “inaccurate” ways — violating rules meant to protect the integrity of criminal proceedings.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 28, 2025
w/ @joshgerstein https://t.co/mBsaZyFR5y pic.twitter.com/Wub5MhNBGG
He further argued that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s remarks violate the local law “because it offers an opinion ‘as to the evidence in the case.’”
After Garcia was brought back to the United States from El Salvador, the Justice Department indicted him for several charges related to transporting illegal immigrants. “The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring. They found this was his full-time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country,” Bondi said at the time.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem referred to Garcia as an “MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator.”
This morning, I joined CBS to report the facts about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Instead, CBS shamefully edited the interview to whitewash the truth about this MS-13 gang member and the threat he poses to American public safety.
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) August 31, 2025
Watch for the part of my interview that @CBS tried to… pic.twitter.com/28fsGZug48
Garcia, an El Salvadoran national, came to the U.S. as a teenager in 2011 to escape gang violence. A judge granted him a withholding of removal in 2019 that allowed him to continue residing in Maryland. The Trump administration deported him in March despite the court order. He was confined in the CECOT mega-prison before a federal court ordered the administration to facilitate his return to the U.S. The Supreme Court upheld that order.
The White House attempted to deport Garcia to Liberia last week before a federal judge in Maryland blocked the move.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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