Abrego Garcia's lawyers ask judge to order Trump administration to stop making inflammatory comments about him
Officials across the Trump administration have attacked Kilmar Abrego Garcia "in numerous highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and false statements," his attorneys said on Thursday.
In a court filing, Abrego Garcia's lawyers asked a court in Tennessee to order all Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security officials to "refrain from making extrajudicial comments that pose a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing" the proceedings.
In July, a magistrate judge in Tennessee overseeing a case in which Abrego Garcia was charged with transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S., issued an order prohibiting attorneys in the case from making "extrajudicial statements [that] will be disseminated by public communication."
In the filing Thursday, however, his lawyers wrote that "numerous government officials have vilified him in the media—and these baseless public attacks have continued even after he was indicted in this District."
Abrego Garcia's attorneys, who said the previous efforts of the court and the defense "have not worked," said senior government officials "continued their assault" on Abrego Garcia last week, "branding him a criminal and promising that he would be removed swiftly from the United States."
Earlier this week after Abrego Garcia was released from custody in Tennessee and then detained in Baltimore, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said: "President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator, to terrorize American citizens any longer."
The lawyers also pointed to remarks made by President Donald Trump in which he called Abrego Garcia an "animal."
"I think he's gonna be good for votes and I think he's very bad for votes," Trump said on Monday in the Oval Office. "These people are deranged. He's not good for votes."
Abrego Garcia's attorneys said "further intervention from the court is necessary" to protect their client's right to a fair trial.
"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," his lawyers said.
In a statement to ABC News, a DHS official said: “If Kilmar 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."
The statement went on to say: "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 media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart, yet they continue to peddle his sob story. We hear far too much about gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims."
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison -- despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution. The Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which his family and attorneys deny.
He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face the charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty.
After returning to Maryland last weekend and being detained by immigration authorities once again, the Trump administration signaled it would attempt to deport him to Uganda.
A federal judge in Maryland has blocked Abrego Garcia's deportation until at least October as his lawyers seek to reopen his immigration case and seek asylum.
