Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have requested that a federal judge in Tennessee place gag orders on Trump officials.
The motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, “respectfully renews [Abrego Garcia’s] earlier requests that the Court order that all DOJ and DHS officials involved in this case, and all officials in their supervisory chain,” including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, “refrain from making extrajudicial comments that pose a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing this proceeding.”
The 15-page filing also criticizes DHS for posting a “litany of inflammatory statements on its official X account.”
“The government’s ongoing barrage of prejudicial statements severely threaten—and perhaps have already irrevocably impaired—the ability to try this case at all—in any venue,” the motion adds. “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.”
A DHS official told The Hill that if 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.”
“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 official explained. “The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart, yet they continue to peddle his sob story.”
The Salvadorian national may be deported to Uganda, although U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis stated that the Trump administration is “forbidden” from deporting Abrego Garcia until a hearing is held.
