At long last, El Salvador native Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released from custody. Abrego Garcia was among the hundred-plus migrants rounded up by ICE and shipped to El Salvador’s infamous torture prison, CECOT. Months of litigation ensued. The Trump administration was ordered (multiple times) to bring him back from El Salvador, with the court finding Garcia’s due process rights (along with most of those sent to CECOT) had been violated.
The government has done everything since then to make Abrego Garcia miserable. Once Garcia was returned to the US, he was immediately jailed as the government dreamed up a bunch of serious crimes to charge him with. According to multiple statements (mainly tweets and such) made by DHS and the administration, Garcia is an MS-13 gang member and human trafficker. Those charges were somehow extracted from a years-old traffic stop where Garcia was released and never charged with anything, much less placed into the deportation pipeline.
Garcia has fought the government every step of the way. And, in return, the government has been vindictively combative. Costa Rica’s government has agreed to allow Garcia to be deported there. But the government wants a head on a spike to intimidate other migrants, so it has given Garcia the option of being prosecuted (while remaining in jail the entire time) or being booted out of an ICE plane in extremely dangerous places like Liberia or Uganda.
If this all looks like a petty group of administration officials trying to punish someone for fighting back, it also looks that way to the court handling the criminal case brought against Abrego Garcia. Not only has the court released Garcia pending his trial, it is now about halfway towards dismissing the case entirely if the government can’t come up with an explanation that doesn’t sound like revenge.
The federal judge overseeing the human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia has canceled an upcoming January trial.
In lieu of that proceeding, the court will hold a one-day evidentiary hearing dedicated to ferreting out whether or not the Maryland man was vindictively and selectively prosecuted by the government.
This week, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, a Barack Obama appointee, slammed the brakes on the controversial prosecution in a relatively terse four-page order – a decided victory for the father of three and an equally stinging loss for the Trump administration.
In the ruling, the judge said the evidence provided by the defense had turned the case in Abrego Garcia’s favor long ago – at least on the due process issue of whether the prosecution is vindictive.
As the order notes, the court is doing the DOJ a favor here. There’s apparently already enough on the record that supports Abrego Garcia’s vindictive prosecution allegation. But the government will get one chance to rebut this early next year.
According to Abrego, the Government has already shown that it cannot [rebut his allegations], given what Abrego asserts to be troves of evidence in the record indicating that his prosecution is actually vindictive. (See Doc. No. 275 at 11–15). Based on this record, Abrego argues that the Court could rule on his Motion without an evidentiary hearing or the testimony of Blanche, McHenry, and Singh.
Nevertheless, the government asserts it can rebut the presumption, and that the evidence does not show actual vindictiveness. To rebut the presumption, the government intends to rely on the testimony of Supervisory Special Agent John VanWie (“SA VanWie”) of Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) Baltimore and Special Agent Rana Saoud (“SA Saoud”) of HSI Nashville, and, perhaps, the testimony of Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire.
Considering this landscape, and Abrego’s insistence that the current record alone warrants dismissal in his favor, whether the Court needs to hear testimony from Blanche, McHenry, and Singh, is questionable. Still, for the sake of thoroughness and to make sure that all parties are fully heard, the Court finds it prudent to proceed with an evidentiary hearing on Abrego’s Motion In doing so, it will limit the hearing to only the second step of the prosecutorial vindictiveness analysis: whether the government can produce objective, on-the-record explanations for Abrego’s prosecution that rebuts the presumption of vindictiveness. If the government can rebut that showing, the Court will revisit the government’s Motion to Quash…
Apparently the government thinks it can win this battle by bringing some mouths to a document fight. Abrego Garcia has already obtained plenty of damning information (which the Trump administration adds to on nearly a daily basis) that makes it clear this is all about punishing him for daring to object to his deportation to CECOT.
I’m sure everyone called to testify will say things about how this is all an extremely normal way to handle someone who asserted their due process rights. But maybe the government should just give up on this one. If the testimony manages to raise questions about the alleged vindictiveness, it doesn’t let the government off the hook. All it does is open it up to further discovery via Abrego Garcia’s pending subpoenas.
And I’m sure the judge will have something to say about the DHS’s actions over the weekend, where it took to social media to complain about a gag order while simultaneously violating it.
The Department of Homeland Security’s complaint about being under a gag order on Saturday in its case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump administration illegally deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador earlier this year, likely violated the court order.
Tricia McLaughlin, the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the DHS, said that Abrego Garcia being able to make viral TikTok posts was unfair in a rant on X: “American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement and give megaphones to those who oppose our legal system.”
If you can’t read/see what McLaughlin reposted, it’s an X post by MAGA grifter/podcaster Benny Johnson that reads:
MS-13 terrorist Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released by a rogue judge and is now making TikToks.
To be clear, the gag order doesn’t prevent Abrego Garcia from making videos of himself lip-synching to Christian songs. The gag order targets the Trump administration because it has spent the last several months attacking Abrego Garcia on social media and smearing him with unproven allegations. Since this obviously affects Garcia’s right to a fair trial, the judge reasonably ordered the government to knock it off.
And it has responded by reposting a smear and bitching about an “activist judge” — the same judge it will have to answer to late next month. Odds are the government is going to be called to court well ahead of this deadline to explain why it thinks it doesn’t need follow orders handed down by federal judges.
For all its talk about trimming down government spending, an untold amount of money has been blown just to keep one person from getting one over on the Trump administration.
That man would be Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He became the poster boy for the regime’s bigotry when he fought back against his sudden deportation to El Salvador’s most infamous prison.
Abrego Garcia is Salvadoran. He fled that country and sought asylum in the United States. There were reasons he didn’t want to be sent back there. Not that the Trump administration cared. It just wanted him out and was willing to send him to a torture prison run by a self-admitted dictator. The administration made a lot of questionable claims about Garcia’s supposed MS-13 gang activity to justify flying him out to a receptive hellhole.
Abrego Garcia fought back. And he has proven to be a constant embarrassment for a government overrun by mouth-breathing bullies. Garcia managed to get un-ejected from the country, exposing multiple lies told by the government while doing so. For that, he was punished further. The administration brought him back just so it could throw him in an American prison, claiming he was involved in all sorts of hideous crimes.
A court reasonably found that this was vindictive prosecution. It also ordered Abrego Garcia’s release. But the government fought back with an absurd (and hideous) trial tax: Garcia could either plead guilty to the (pun intentional?) trumped-up charges or get hurled into a war-torn country where human rights are nearly nonexistent.
The Trump administration has moved to dissolve the ban on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s removal so that it can proceed with his deportation to Liberia.
In a series of filings overnight, government attorneys said that the Salvadoran native’s claim of fear of torture or persecution in the African nation was denied after he was interviewed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services last week.
The attorneys for the Department of Justice argued that the preliminary injunction blocking Abrego Garcia’s removal to Liberia should be dissolved because the government received assurances from the government of the West African country that he will not be persecuted or tortured.
Yep, that’s how it’s going in the purported Land of the Free that has spent the past few days stroking itself off in celebration of Veterans Day. American troops, who have done everything they can to prevent foreign countries from becoming what the Trump administration desires to be, are being celebrated for protecting the freedoms this regime considers to be mere privileges.
And let’s all enjoy a long disgusted LOL at the government’s assertions. Liberia’s government is corrupt AF and any assurances it might make about some rando should not be trusted. And, again, if the real reason (as stated multiple times by the administration) is to remove this “dangerous criminal” from the US, what’s wrong with sending him to Costa Rica? The government has already said it will take custody of Abrego Garcia, and it would be another “win” for the administration to add another person to its “self-deportation” column.
But we all know what’s really happening here. The Trump administration wants to punish Abrego Garcia for making them look bad. And sending him to a country he’s agreed to go to doesn’t do that. They need him to feel endangered to make it clear to others who might stand up to having their own civil liberties and rights violated, that they, too, may face similar risks. Abrego Garcia spoke out against the injustices the Trump administration rained down upon him, and for that he must pay.
This constant hate-on is considered a feature, not a bug, by the so-called representatives of the Free World. It’s abhorrent and it should be a constant stain on their legislative histories. Unfortunately, there are no adults with any semblance of a conscience left in the GOP, so we’ll get what we get for as long as people who stroke themselves off to the National Anthem continue to believe this nation’s path to greatness involves destroying everyone’s humanity, including their own.
CBS has decided it likes being in an abusive relationship. A few months ago, it laid the groundwork for perpetual extortion by settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump over allegedly deceptive editing of an interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Trump claimed this was election interference and sued, despite winning the election, re-taking power, and using that power to get even with every person or entity he feels has wronged him.
The motivation for CBS wasn’t the money. It only agreed to donate $16 million to the Trump library, which should be more than enough to cover the costs of erecting a physical tribute to Trump’s artifice. Sure, someone may put a few books in there, but it’s pretty much guaranteed Trump will not have read any of them. The real motivation was greasing the wheels for administration approval of its $8 billion merger with Skydance.
CBS shouldn’t have bothered. All this did was open the door to more direct federal government interference with its day-to-day business, which has since seen CBS dump Stephen Colbert for being too critical of Trump, as well as agreeing to be a propaganda outlet for the Trump administration with the impending installation of an FCC-appointed “bias monitor” to ensure future programming treats Trump as a demigod, rather than the mere politician he actually is.
But too much is never enough for Trump and the GOP. Kristi Noem recently took to X to complain that some of her baseless smears of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — the highly visible face of the administration’s risible “eject all the brown people” deportation program — had been removed from the broadcast version of her interview on “Face the Nation.”
That Noem bellied up to the Nazi Bar to bitch about stuff most people realize is the reality of taped interviews (things get cut for time/clarity/etc. all the time) after CBS had already published a full transcript of the interview as well as the uncut recording didn’t matter to Noem, Trump, or any of their always ready-to-be-roused rabble.
And it apparently didn’t matter much to CBS, either. Rather than defending its perfectly normal editing techniques or pointing out that the things said in the cut portion were mostly baseless criminal accusations that weren’t backed by criminal convictions (much less filed criminal charges), CBS has given Trump and his buddies things they haven’t even asked for, ensuring this cycle of abuse will continue for as long as the GOP remains in power.
Days after complaints over the handling of an interview with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on “Face the Nation,” CBS News said Friday it would no longer allow editing of its guests’ words on the Sunday morning public affairs show.
[…]
Going forward, CBS said it would only broadcast live or live-to-tape interviews on the show, meaning guests’ statements could not be edited, subject to legal or national security restrictions. CBS said the change was made “in response to audience feedback.”
This wasn’t “audience feedback.” This was a powerful administration getting mad about stuff that happens to pretty much everyone who’s ever recorded a taped interview ever. And if there was any “audience feedback,” it came from people who truly seem to desire nothing but pro-Trump propaganda spewing from their TV sets, rather than have to endure things like facts, pointed questions, and journalists refusing to be government stenographers.
Even worse, CBS’s official explanation caters to exactly the wrong sort of people: bullies with executive-level power in the government and the be-hatted asshats that adore the velvety touch of a boot heel applied to their tongue/neck:
In its announcement, CBS News said the policy will allow for “greater transparency” in interviews.
Yeah, I mean… I guess. But CBS had already engaged in “greater transparency” by posting the entire Noem interview and transcript before Noem even started to complain about it. CBS already did the “transparency” thing. Allowing government officials to utilize CBS as a bullhorn for baseless claims and outright lies doesn’t serve the public interest.
But this administration doesn’t serve the public interest either. And it doesn’t want anyone getting in the way of its disservice. With this capitulation, CBS shows that even one of the largest corporations in the United States is unable to stand up to bullies, even though it has all of the law on its side. That’s extremely disheartening, especially when it appears even the system of checks and balances appears to be, for the most part, willing to be steamrolled into submission, if not actively engaged in supporting the rise of Republic authoritarianism.
You don’t often see blackmail victims extending offers to their blackmailers to sit down and discuss political issues, but that’s what happened when CBS — who recently paid off Trump to settle a lawsuit the broadcaster could have won — invited Kristi Noem to talk out of her perfectly coiffed ass for most of an hour last Sunday.
Of course, being graciously hosted by an entity that recently got thugged into submission by the burgeoning autocracy Noem has chosen to enable didn’t pass without comment. All the graciousness was on behalf of CBS News and Face the Nation host Ed O’Keefe. All the usual vile hatefulness belonged to Kristi Noem, who immediately went to Where The Nazi Things Are® to complain about having only some of her lies removed by CBS before the interview went live:
If you can’t see the embedded screenshot (or would rather not actually have to lay your eyes on the liar), here’s the directly quoted crux of Noem’s illegitimate complaint:
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.
What’s not acknowledged in this X post is that CBS had already posted the full transcript — as well as the full recording — before Noem decided to go live with her complaint.
Here’s what was removed from the interview that bothered Noem so much she felt the need to rile the most easily riled members of the Red Army MAGA nation:
This individual was a known human smuggler, MS-13 gang member, an individual who’s a wife beater, and someone who was so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors. And even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off, he was so sick in what he was doing and how he was treating small children. So he needs to never be in the United States of America, and our administration is making sure we’re doing all that we can to bring him to justice.
This was Noem’s response to one of a few questions about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has been the government’s plaything for months, starting with his exile to El Salvador’s torture prison, continuing through his being the centerpiece of the DOJ’s “fuck the courts” efforts to shield Trump’s mass deportation program from anything and everything, including long-established constitutional rights.
It’s only when the administration was forced to bring Abrego Garcia back that it started pretending he was some sort of ultra-dangerous human trafficker. Even that case is so questionable the DOJ has gone past the normal bullshit of the “trial tax” to present Abrego Garcia with two untenable options: plead guilty to a bunch of exaggerated charges and get deported to Costa Rica once the prison sentence is served, or proceed to trial and get deported to Uganda just for pissing the government off.
But back to Noem and her performative complaints. First off, interviews are always edited for time and clarity. This isn’t something new, nor is it something that only Trump officials have to deal with.
Second — and much more importantly — CBS News (its payoff to Trump notwithstanding) is not a propaganda arm of the current administration. It is a journalistic entity that maintains a First Amendment-protected right to curate its own output.
Even more importantly than that last part, this is exactly the sort of thing more news agencies should be doing, especially when every major or minor figure in the Trump administration feels comfortable lying to the public about pretty much everything. These people can spout their lies. No one’s under any obligation to give them a platform, as Greg Sargent points out in his article for The New Republic (emphasis in the original):
Responding to Noem, a CBS spokesperson says the full interview was posted on line, and notes that cuts were made to fit the segment into a limited time-slot. As it happens, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this edit, and it’s fairly common for networks to do this with lengthy interviews.
But it’s worth going further than this spokesperson did: Not airing footage of Noem’s lies and smears unchallenged was, journalistically speaking, the correct thing to do. CBS News is under no obligation to air them, and arguably should not have. If anything, CBS bent over backward to let her have her say, posting full video of the interview online, including her making those charges—which, again, are unproven—with no serious rebuttal.
That’s something CBS News has acknowledged as tacitly as possible. That it’s buried under the full transcript of Noem’s constant lies, exaggerations, and unproven claims doesn’t really matter. The fact that this was appended to the interview Noem sought to use as another example of unfairness to the most powerful people in the world speaks volumes on its own, even if you have to scroll a bit to… um… hear it.
*Editor’s note: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been charged with two counts of human smuggling and has pleaded not guilty. He is currently in ICE detention pending trial. He has not been charged with any counts related to child abuse.
That response shows yet another reason why CBS News was right to remove that bit of Noem’s spew from the televised version: none of these allegations have been proven in court and some of what’s alleged hasn’t even been alleged by the DOJ in its court filings.
To simplify things a bit (perhaps even a bit too much!), Noem is arguably engaged in slander when she says things like “someone who was so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors” about Abrego Garcia. While CBS News couldn’t be held liable for things Noem said, it certainly isn’t going to take any chances when it has already demonstrated it’s kind of a soft target when it comes to this kind of litigation. If nothing else, removing Noem’s unproven (and un-alleged, at least officially!) statements about Abrego Garcia lowers the number of potential headaches, give or take a few thousand asshats who believe anything this administration tells them.
CBS did the right thing here, even if it may not have done it intentionally. It muted claims about someone this administration desperately needs to vilify to justify its bigoted ejection of anyone with less-than-white skin from this country. Noem’s anger over this demonstrates yet again that everyone of these ultra-privileged motherfuckers thinks every private citizen works for them, rather than the other way around.
The man who never expected to be the public face of the Trump administration’s shotgun approach to deportation is, yet again, being given a set of untenable options and expected to pick one of them. And when he refused to accept the bad choice they gave him, they arrested him this morning at his mandated ICE check-in and announced they’re just going to send him to Uganda.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was originally swept up by ICE and sent to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison, despite have a clear court order that he could not be deported to El Salvador.
Garcia is from El Salvador. Although he’d clearly like to remain in the States with his family, if he had to be removed from the US, he’d prefer to be sent to nearby Costa Rica, which has promised to grant him status, rather than left to rot in a prison overseen by the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” (or an American prison on totally trumped up charges that don’t pass the laugh test).
Garcia has been yanked around by the Trump administration, which has vehemently refused to take even the smallest loss in the War on asylum seekers, even if doing so might have resulted in larger wins later. This yanking around extended to a federal court, where DOJ prosecutors and DHS legal advisors repeatedly tested the patience of multiple presiding judges.
After weeks of claiming it was impossible to retrieve Garcia from the Salvadoran hellhole the administration had sent him to, Garcia was suddenly returned to the United States. While that may have been good news, the rest of it wasn’t. The government still wanted to make Garcia pay for refusing to accept his unlawful punishment silently. It threw the book at him upon his return, claiming Garcia was nothing more than a human trafficker — something it based solely on a 2022 traffic stop where Garcia wasn’t even cited, much less arrested for any criminal activity whatsoever. Two separate courts found the entire claim by the US government preposterous and ordered him released from jail.
The federal government is trying to force Kilmar Abrego Garcia to accept a guilty plea or face deportation to Uganda, his attorneys claimed in a filing on Saturday.
The Salvadoran man, who was wrongly deported in March before being brought back to the United States to face human smuggling charges, was released from criminal custody in Tennessee and sent back to Maryland on Friday.
After Abrego Garcia declined an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to the human smuggling charges, his attorneys say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement informed them that he could be deported to Uganda and ordered him to report to their office in Baltimore on Monday.
This is just more pure cruelty from a president who’s made that his presidential brand. Costa Rica would be the obvious choice when the only other option is Uganda, one of the poorest nations in the world. But Costa Rica is only an option if Garcia pleads guilty to fake charges and serves time in prison. If he wants to remain a “free” man, he must subject himself to being involuntarily displaced yet again, unceremoniously deposited in one of the worst places this cruel and unusual administration can think to send him.
The DOJ, of course, refuses to address the allegations made by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers. Instead, its statement says nothing about the pressure it’s applying. Nor does it explain why the government has decided on Uganda as the final destination for Garcia should he refuse to give it the guilty plea it sorely needs to justify its heinous actions after the fact. And rather than actually dealing with this appropriately, they just decided to arrest him and announce the plan to send him to Uganda. It’s pretty clear that the choice of Uganda is about further punishing Garcia for existing and trying to exercise his own rights.
This came a few hours after Abrego Garcia filed a lawsuit to try to block ICE from doing this.
All of this is so blatantly obvious retaliation for making the Trump administration look bad. They wanted quiet acquiescence as they illegally human trafficked hundreds of people to a foreign gulag, and now they’re taking it out on one guy for daring to ask to have his basic rights respected. It’s a sad show from a pathetic Trump administration that is simply unable to handle anyone pointing out their mistakes.
People have referred to CECOT, the Salvadoran gulag, as “The Prison that Nobody Leaves.” That’s one reason (of many) that it was so concerning that the Trump regime was renditioning people there with no due process. Indeed, most had no criminal record at all. This is why there were concerns that it would, in fact, be impossible to ever get Kilmar Abrego Garcia (who goes by Kilmar Abrego) back: because El Salvador’s dictator, Nayib Bukele, would never let anyone out to say what they had seen.
Indeed it was surprising enough, when Senator Chris Van Hollen was finally able to meet with Abrego, that he was told that once the controversy over his detainment got enough attention, he had been moved to a different prison. It was even more surprising that the US did actually bring him back to the country, even though it was to face what appeared to be completely fabricated criminal charges.
Because, bringing him back—even to fight criminal charges—would allow him to do something like tell the world (and the courts) about the hellscape that is CECOT.
Plaintiff Abrego Garcia reports that he was subjected to severe mistreatment upon arrival at CECOT, including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.
The handoff from US to Salvadoran custody was seamless—and brutal:
Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was pushed toward a bus, forcibly seated, and fitted with a second set of chains and handcuffs. He was repeatedly struck by officers when he attempted to raise his head. He observed an ICE agent on the bus communicating with Salvadoran officials to confirm the identities of the Salvadoran nationals on board before the bus departed.
But the real horror began upon arrival:
Upon arrival at CECOT, the detainees were greeted by a prison official who stated, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.” Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was then forced to strip, issued prison clothing, and subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster. His head was shaved with a zero razor, and he was frog-marched to cell 15, being struck with wooden batons along the way. By the following day, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia had visible bruises and lumps all over his body.
The psychological torture was as systematic as the physical:
In Cell 15, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia and 20 other Salvadorans were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion. During this time, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself. The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.
Guards weaponized the prison’s gang population as a tool of terror:
While at CECOT, prison officials repeatedly told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that they would transfer him to the cells containing gang members who, they assured him, would “tear” him apart.
These weren’t idle threats:
Indeed, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia repeatedly observed prisoners in nearby cells who he understood to be gang members violently harm each other with no intervention from guards or personnel. Screams from nearby cells would similarly ring out throughout the night without any response from prison guards on personnel.
The physical toll was severe and immediate:
During his first two weeks at CECOT, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia suffered a significant deterioration in his physical condition and lost approximately 31 pounds (dropping from approximately 215 pounds to 184 pounds).
The complaint reveals that officials weren’t just torturing Abrego—they were actively trying to hide the evidence. This included staging photos to create a false narrative and, once the controversy grew, moving him to a different facility where he could be hidden from oversight.
The desperation to silence Abrego explains why the Trump administration is freeing actual criminals in exchange for their testimony against him—a remarkable admission that they’d rather have dangerous felons on the streets than let this witness speak freely.
Abrego’s testimony represents the first unfiltered account of conditions inside CECOT—and it’s damning. But this isn’t just about one man’s suffering. It’s about a deliberate policy of sending people, most without any criminal record, to a facility that operates as a torture chamber.
The Trump administration knew exactly what CECOT was when they started using it as a foreign rendition site. They knew people wouldn’t come back to tell their stories. They counted on the silence.
That silence has now been broken. The question is whether anyone will be held accountable for turning torture into immigration policy.
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement has revealed itself to be not just cruel, but fundamentally backwards: They’re literally freeing dangerous criminals while manufacturing cases against innocent people. And they’re doing it all to cover up their own massive legal fuckups.
Take the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. We covered this last week when Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ordered his release, noting that the Justice Department appeared to have leaned on actual criminals to fabricate evidence against him. Now the Washington Post has the full story, and it’s even more damning: The Trump admin is literally freeing a repeat violent offender in exchange for testimony against Abrego—a man with no criminal history who was working and raising a family.
The Trump administration has agreed to release from prison a three-time felon who drunkenly fired shots in a Texas community and spare him from deportation in exchange for hiscooperation in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García, according to a review of court records and official testimony.
Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, 38, has been convicted of smuggling migrants and illegally reentering the United States after having been deported. He also pleaded guilty to “deadly conduct” in the Texas incident, and is now the government’s star witness in its case against Abrego.
Let that sink in: They’re freeing someone, who drunkenly fired shots in a community, to help them prosecute someone whose only “crime” was being the victim of the government’s own illegal deportation, making the Trump administration look totally incompetent in the process.
Remember, the Trump regime insisted that it was focused on going after the worst of the worst, the most hardened criminals of all. Yet, over and over again we’re finding out that they can’t actually find all those criminals they insisted were out there, so they’re randomly grabbing anyone they can find. In the case of Abrego, that meant taking a man who had no criminal history, and appeared to be gainfully employed, and raising a family, and shipping him to the one place an immigration court had forbidden the US to send him.
That set the DOJ off on a wild goose chase to try to justify their own massive fuckup, leading to these questionable criminal charges against him, which they used to try to distract from the fact that they accidentally sent a man to a foreign concentration camp after being forbidden from doing so.
But to make that work, apparently it involves freeing the actual hardened, dangerous criminal, in hopes that he’ll testify against Abrego.
Hernandezis among a handful of cooperating witnesses who could help the Trump administration achieve its goal of never letting Abrego walk free in the United States again. In exchange, he has already been released early from federal prison to a halfway house and has been given permission to stay in the U.S. for at least a year.
“Otherwise he would be deported,” Peter Joseph, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent, testified at Abrego’s criminal hearing June 13. The government is also likely to give him a work permit, the agent told the court.
There’s no way to look at this other than “we’ll release a hardened criminal who is here illegally, and who has already been deported multiple times, including letting him stay in the US with working apers, so long as he concocts a story that lets DHS and the DOJ save face after we fucked up royally in renditioning a man illegally.”
That should be an embarrassment to the Trump regime, but it will barely get any attention.
It Gets Worse: Trump Is Also Freeing MS-13 Leaders
But the Abrego case isn’t an isolated incident—it’s part of a pattern. At the same time Trump is manufacturing criminal cases against innocent people, he’s also cutting deals to free actual MS-13 gang leaders.
Even among the brutal ranks of the transnational gang called MS-13, Vladimir Arévalo Chávez stands out as a highly effective manager of murder, prosecutors say.
Known as “Vampiro,” he has been accused of overseeing killings in at least three countries: of migrants in Mexico, rivals in El Salvador and his own compatriots in the United States.
His arrest in February 2023 was a major triumph for American investigators, who only months earlier had accused him and 12 other gang leaders of terrorism, bloodshed and corruption in a wide-ranging federal indictment on Long Island.
But this April, the prosecutors who brought those charges suddenly — and quietly — asked a federal judge to drop them. Citing “national security concerns,” they said they needed to return Mr. Arévalo to El Salvador, his homeland.
The report details how these actual MS-13 leaders have evidence of Bukele’s corruption, and Bukele asked for them back, rather than letting them tell their stories to American courts:
But the Trump administration has not acknowledged another reason Mr. Bukele would want them back: U.S. prosecutors have amassed substantial evidence of a corrupt pact between the Salvadoran government and some high-ranking MS-13 leaders, who they say agreed to drive down violence and bolster Mr. Bukele politically in exchange for cash and perks in jail, a New York Times investigation found.
The deal with El Salvador heralded by Mr. Trump as a crackdown on crimeis actually undermining a longstanding U.S. inquiry into the gang, according to multiple people with knowledge of the initiative. Two major ongoing cases against some of the gang’s highest-ranking leaders could be badly damaged, and other defendants could be less likely to cooperate or testify in court, they said.
The Pattern Is Clear
So let’s be clear about what’s happening here:
Innocent people like Abrego: Prosecuted with manufactured evidence from criminals who get released in exchange for their testimony
Actual violent criminals: Released early from prison and given work permits if they’ll help prosecute innocent people
MS-13 gang leaders: Handed over to a foreign dictator to protect that dictator from corruption charges, undermining ongoing DOJ investigations
This isn’t “tough on crime”—it’s the opposite. It’s law enforcement theater that makes everyone less safe while covering up the administration’s own legal violations.
All that seems really bad! It’s almost as if the Trump regime is much more focused on public relations claims than actually helping to stop gang activity.
Meanwhile, the judge in his criminal case has agreed that even though they’ve ruled that he should be released, Abrego is probably safer in federal prison, because were he released, ICE would likely ship him halfway around the world to some dangerous war zone.
Think about that: A federal judge is keeping someone in prison not because they’re dangerous, but because they’re safer there than in the hands of immigration enforcement. That’s where we are now—federal prison as sanctuary from ICE’s lawlessness.
This is what happens when immigration enforcement becomes completely divorced from actual public safety and becomes, instead, a machine for generating propaganda victories, no matter how many innocent people get ground up in the process.
The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia (who we now find out, via his lawyer, prefers to be called Kilmar Abrego) keeps getting more and more bizarre. After being “accidentally” shipped to El Salvador — despite a judge’s order directly barring such a move — the Trump regime has spent months (1) denying that they could even get him back from El Salvador while (2) simultaneously trying to claim Abrego was a hardened criminal, possibly child groomer and murderer. And then, magically, a few weeks ago they were able to bring him back to the US to charge him criminally with charges that seemed obviously exaggerated, based entirely on a single traffic stop from years ago in which the cops let him go with no follow up.
And, in the first review of the criminal case, Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes found the entire thing so ludicrous that she ordered Abrego be released (something that won’t happen, as the DOJ immediately appealed). Among the many, many problems, the opinion found that much of the evidence presented wasn’t just double or triple hearsay, but relied heavily on some actual human smugglers, who appear to have been given leniency in response to their highly questionable and often contradictory claims. Not to mention some of their claims being effectively impossible.
When we wrote about the indictment, we highlighted how weak it sounded (not to mention a long-term DOJ criminal prosecutor resigning rather than bringing the charges). Some people told us that they were sure that the feds had more evidence to support the claims, but if they do, they sure didn’t show that evidence to Magistrate Judge Holmes.
Holmes admits upfront that her order that Abrego should be released is mostly an “academic exercise,” since she knows that the DOJ will appeal and the government admitted in a hearing directly that if Abrego is released, they will send ICE to rendition him to some other country besides El Salvador. But that doesn’t change how fucked up she believes the charges against Abrego to be.
Because the DOJ has basically no real evidence to support the charges or the idea that Abrego is a risk or threat to society, it tries to manufacture the claim that he “trafficked” children. The judge notes that the DOJ itself seems confused about the difference between trafficking and smuggling, pointing out that they used the terms interchangeably, despite the laws being different and the issues being different.
Then, she notes that the evidence of Abrego ever “smuggling” a child is beyond flimsy. They had a federal agent quoting a Tennessee state trooper claiming that there was someone underage in the vehicle Abrego was driving when he was stopped. Let us count the layers of hearsay:
Here, the Court finds that the origination of the roster and the circumstances surrounding its creation are so remote and attenuated from Special Agent Joseph’s testimony that it cannot be given the conclusive weight for which it is offered by the government. The exhibit on which the government relies is a photograph taken by THP Trooper Foster, not by Special Agent Joseph – first layer of hearsay – of a document prepared at the request of THP Trooper Foster – second layer of hearsay – by the occupants of the vehicle driven by Abrego – third layer of hearsay. While the body camera footage – which is itself hearsay – includes the passing around of a piece of paper among the vehicle occupants at the direction of a THP trooper on the scene, the detail of the roster is visible only briefly in the body camera footage. A still shot of the roster detail from the body camera footage was also admitted as a government exhibit.
Clearly, the most reliable evidence of the accuracy of the information in the roster would be the testimony of the individual who wrote down that information. Special Agent Joseph testified that, although HSI has identified and located six of the nine other people in the vehicle driven by Abrego on November 30, 2022, they have not located the individual who is purported to have provided a birth year of 2007. Absent that individual’s testimony, the next most reliable source about the accuracy of the roster information would be the testimony of THP Trooper Foster. If subject to examination, THP Trooper Foster could be asked whether he considered the 2007 birth year to be reasonable based on his observation of the individual who provided the information. Did the passenger look like a 15-year-old? Was he shaving yet? Was he slight of build? But THP Trooper Foster was not offered as a witness.
Also, the incredible weakness of the evidence becomes clear when the judge notes that there is a claim that rather than relying on a written list of birthdates, the cops supposedly photographed passports… but suddenly those photos can’t be found. Oops.
According to Special Agent Joseph, THP Trooper Foster’s body camera footage was purged and is no longer available. Special Agent Joseph additionally testified that THP Trooper Foster took photographs of the passports of the occupants of the vehicle, which would have confirmed the accuracy of the 2007 birthdate. However, even though the photograph of the roster was produced, the photographs of the passports cannot be located, according to Special Agent Joseph’s testimony.
Also… it’s not even clear that the supposedly written-by-a-passenger’s date of birth is 2007 was… actually 2007.
Additionally, defense counsel argued at the detention hearing that the 7 in the written birth year of 2007 appears to have been modified from a 1. That is not entirely without foundation, as there does appear to be some overwriting of the 7. Further, there is a question about whether the 7, even if not edited, is a number seven (7) or a number one (1). If a number one (1), then the individual with that birth date was born in 2001, not 2007. The number one (1) and the number seven (7) are among the letters, symbols, and numbers sometimes described as visually ambiguous characters because they can be indistinguishable in many types of print and especially in handwriting
The magistrate even points out that another of the submitted handwritten birthdates of someone who wrote either 1998 or 1999, the “1” is written in a manner similar to the “7” in contention in the 2001/2007 dispute.
The government’s entire argument that Abrego transported a minor on November 30, 2022 depends on the last digit in the birth year being 7 rather than 1. That the roster photograph invites this kind of scrutiny and supposition to resolve any doubts diminishes its reliability. The Court cannot find that the photograph is sufficiently reliable to satisfy the government’s burden of showing that this case involves a minor victim for purposes of § 3142(f)(1)(E) without some other corroboration such as the missing photograph of the individual’s passport, which THP Trooper relayed to Special Agent Joseph exists (or perhaps at least existed)
She also points out that the supposed support from those who told federal agents exactly what they wanted to hear isn’t all that believable for a variety of expected reasons:
The first cooperator, who provided interview statements and grand jury testimony, has two prior felony convictions, has previously been deported five times, and was released early from a 30-month federal prison sentence for human smuggling as part of his cooperation in this case. He is the purported domestic leader of the human smuggling organization in which Abrego is accused of participating. He has been granted deferred action on deportation in exchange for his testimony.
That sure sounds like the Trump regime is soooooo focused on convincing the world that Abrego is a human smuggler that they’re set to release an actual human smuggler so long as he swears Abrego is involved.
Oh sorry. Not one, but two such people:
The second cooperator is also an avowed member of the human smuggling organization and is presently in custody charged with a federal crime for which he hopes to be released in exchange for his cooperating grand jury testimony. He has also been previously deported and has requested deferred action on deportation in exchange for his cooperation. The second cooperator is a closely related family member of the first cooperator.
Yeah, this doesn’t seem very convincing at all, as the judge notes the “double hearsay” testimony defies common sense and would require physically impossible stunts by Abrego.
The Court gives little weight to this hearsay testimony – double hearsay through Special Agent Joseph’s testimony – of the first male cooperator, a two-time, previously-deported felon, and acknowledged ringleader of a human smuggling operation, who has now obtained for himself an early release from federal prison and delay of a sixth deportation by providing information to the government. Nor do the hearsay statements of the second male cooperator on this issue fare any better, as his requested release from jail and delay of another deportation depends on providing information the government finds useful. Even without discounting the weight of the testimony of the first and second male cooperators for the multiple layers of hearsay, their testimony and statementsdefy common sense.
Both male cooperators stated that, other than three or four trips total without his children, Abrego typically took his children with him during the alleged smuggling trips from Maryland to Houston and back, some 2,900 miles round-trip, as often as three or four times per week.The sheer number of hours that would be required to maintain this schedule, which would consistently be more than 120 hours per week of driving time, approach physical impossibility.For that additional reason, the Court finds that the statements of the first and second male cooperators are not reliable to establish that this case “involves a minor victim.”
And while the government tries to argue Abrego is a flight risk because he faces a theoretical 90 years in prison, the magistrate notes that even if there were actual evidence supporting these claims, similar cases in this district received an average sentence of… 12 months.
Meanwhile, the magistrate judge is further unimpressed by the “evidence” that Abrego is a bigshot MS-13 member since it involves not just more hearsay… but contradictory hearsay!
The government’s evidence that Abrego is a member of MS-13 consists of general statements, all double hearsay, from two cooperating witnesses: the second male cooperator and N.V. Those statements are, however, directly inconsistent with statements by the first cooperator. In interviews, the second male cooperator, whose general unreliability the Court addressed above, stated broadly to Special Agent Joseph that Abrego was “familial” with purported gang members. Other than this vague statement, there is no evidence of when these interactions occurred or in what context (other than as general greetings), how the second male cooperator determined those other unidentified individuals to be known gang members, or precisely how some perceived interaction between Abrego and other unidentified individuals substantiates gang membership.
There’s even more nonsense with a previously paid informant who made some sketchy claims about Abrego’s gang membership, but the judge points out that the “cooperating witness” had only interacted with Abrego many years ago when she was still a teenager.
This is a problem when you’re manufacturing a fake case by finding a bunch of actual criminals looking for leniency who will say anything. Sometimes they (*gasp*) make shit up:
Contrary to the statements of the second cooperator and NV, the first male cooperator told Special Agent Joseph that, in ten years of acquaintance with Abrego, there were no signs or markings, including tattoos, indicating that Abrego is an MS-13 member. This statement specifically repudiates any outward indicia that Abrego belongs to MS-13, in stark contrast to the non-specific second cooperator’s and N.V.’s feelings that Abrego may belong to MS-13. Given these conflicting statements, the government’s evidence of Abrego’s alleged gang membership is simply insufficient.
On and on it goes. Each bit of evidence looking weaker and weaker. I could go through it all — including how weak the evidence is that Abrego transported drugs or owned a bunch of guns — but you get the picture.
If it wasn’t already clear from the weakness of the indictment, it is clear now: this is a wholly manufactured case by the Trump regime who was so desperate to turn Abrego into a gun-toting, drug and human trafficking “bad guy,” that they effectively fabricated obviously laughable evidence, knowing full well that the MAGA faithful and stenographer media would repeat.
But as soon as a magistrate judge looked at the details, they saw how it’s obviously all nonsense. Again, this won’t lead to Abrego’s release, but it should be a reminder of what this government will do to try to cover up its own horrific mistake.
Bizarrely buried near the bottom of NY Times article about the chaos behind the renditioning of people to a Salvadoran gulag is an important detail: the US and El Salvador have already brought back eight people who were “mistakenly” sent there:
In Washington, the Trump administration was working to address Mr. Bukele’s confusion about whom the United States had sent him. Eight women who had been mistakenly sent were swiftly flown back.
That seems to go hand in hand with something else the President said this week. In a revealing “100 days” interview with ABC’s Terry Moran, Donald Trump finally admitted what we’ve been saying all along: he absolutely could get Abrego Garcia — the man his administration illegally shipped to El Salvador — back to the US with a single phone call. And then, in the same breath, he explained why he won’t do it, which directly disobeys a court order, while insisting he “follows the law.”
The exchange about getting Garcia back is stunning in its brazen disregard for court orders and a weird claim that he’s somehow not in charge of his own presidency:
TERRY MORAN: You could get him back. There’s a phone on this desk.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I could.
TERRY MORAN: You could pick it up, and with all —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I could
TERRY MORAN: — the power of the presidency, you could call up the president of El Salvador and say, “Send him back,” right now.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.
TERRY MORAN: But the court has ordered you —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But he’s not.
TERRY MORAN: — to facilitate that — his release–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’m not the one making this decision. We have lawyers that don’t want —
TERRY MORAN: You’re the president.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — to do this, Terry —
TERRY MORAN: Yeah, but the — but the buck stops in this office —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I — no, no, no, no. I follow the law. You want me to follow the law. If I were the president that just wanted to do anything, I’d probably keep him right where he is —
TERRY MORAN: The Supreme Court says what the law is.
As you’ll recall, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the district court’s order to “facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador” was perfectly valid. For months, the administration has pretended it was somehow impossible to get Garcia back. Now, with a single exchange, Trump — the ChatGPT President who typically generates plausible-sounding words disconnected from reality — accidentally stumbled into admitting the truth.
And that should be interesting to Judge Xinis in the district court, who has repeatedly asked the government what steps it has taken to do that facilitation.
It has been obvious that the answer is “fuck all” this whole time, but for a little while the administration kept (ludicrously) pretending that it was functionally impossible for the US to try to get him back.
So, now you have the President of the US admitting what everyone already knew: that of course he could call up Bukele and get Garcia back. I am assuming that this statement will show up in court before long, if it hasn’t been filed already.
The next part, though, is where things get ridiculous. For Trump to claim “I’m not the one making the decision” is laughable. Dude, you’re the President. You’re the one who keeps running around claiming to have the full power over the executive branch that no one can review. Now, suddenly it’s “the lawyers that don’t want to do this.” C’mon.
And then to put a cherry on top of this gaslighting sundae, he claims “I follow the law” in a discussion about how he is literally doing the exact opposite of that.
Trump’s admission about being able to get Garcia back couldn’t come at a worse time for the DOJ, which has been desperately trying to slow-walk the court case. Judge Xinis, already fed up with their delay tactics, recently shot down their latest attempt to stall. Despite a sealed motion from the government last week that briefly paused proceedings, on Wednesday she ordered discovery to continue on an expedited schedule — everything must be completed by May 14th.
Now the DOJ will need to explain to an increasingly impatient judge why they can’t get Garcia back when their own boss just admitted on national television that he could easily do it with a single phone call and the only thing holding him back were the very DOJ lawyers telling the judge that the President can’t do what she’s ordered.
Which he’s just admitted he can. You almost (but not really, they chose this) feel sorry for the DOJ lawyers who will have to face the judge.
And yet, somehow, admitting he could easily comply with a court order but won’t wasn’t even the craziest part of Trump’s Garcia comments. That distinction belongs to his utterly unhinged insistence that Garcia had “MS-13” tattooed on his knuckles. Let’s start with the actual evidence: when Senator Chris Van Hollen met with Garcia in El Salvador, the photos clearly showed his hand tattoos:
The very next day, Trump held up what he claimed was proof of MS-13 tattoos — but it was clearly just a visual aid with typed letters and explanatory text:
The disconnect between reality and Trump’s claims led to this surreal exchange:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I campaigned on that issue. I’ve done an amazing job. I have closed borders. He said you couldn’t do it, you wouldn’t be able to do it, it would never happen. Well, it happened. And it happened —
TERRY MORAN: Alright.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — very quickly. Wait a minute. When we have criminals, murderers, criminals in this country, we have to get ’em out. And we’re doing it.
TERRY MORAN: By law —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And you’ll pick out one man, but even the man that you picked out —
TERRY MORAN: He’s got —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — he said he’d — wasn’t a member of a gang. And then they looked, and —
TERRY MORAN: Alright.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: On his knuckles — he had MS-13 —
TERRY MORAN: Alright. There’s dis — there’s a dispute over that —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. He had MS-13 —
TERRY MORAN: Well —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — on his knuckles tattooed.
TERRY MORAN: — he — he — he — it didn’t say– oh, he had some tattoos that are inper — interpreted that way. But let’s move on
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Wait a minute.
TERRY MORAN: I want —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Hey, Terry. Terry. Terry.
TERRY MORAN: He — he did not have the letter —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Don’t do that — M-S-1-3 — It says M-S-one-three.
TERRY MORAN: I — that was Photoshop. So let me just–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That was Photoshop? Terry, you can’t do that — he had —
— he– hey, they’re givin’ you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you’re doin’ the interview. I picked you because — frankly I never heard of you, but that’s okay —
TERRY MORAN: This — I knew this would come —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But I picked you — Terry — but you’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed —
TERRY MORAN: Alright. Alright. We’ll agree to disagree. I want to move on —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Terry.
TERRY MORAN: — to something else.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Terry. Do you want me to show the picture?
TERRY MORAN: I saw the picture. We’ll — we’ll — we’ll agree to disagree —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Oh, and you think it was Photoshop. Well —
TERRY MORAN: Here we go. Here we go.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — don’t Photoshop it. Go look —
TERRY MORAN: Alright.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — at his hand. He had MS-13 —
TERRY MORAN: Fair enough, he did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I’m not an expert on them.
I want to turn to Ukraine, sir —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, no. Terry —
TERRY MORAN: I– I want to get to Ukraine–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Terry, no, no. No, no. He had MS as clear as you can be. Not “interpreted.” This is why people —
TERRY MORAN: Alright.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — no longer believe —
TERRY MORAN: Well.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — the news, because it’s fake news —
TERRY MORAN: When he was photographed in El Sal — in– in El Salvador, they aren’t there. But let’s just go on —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: He is —
TERRY MORAN: They aren’t there when he’s in El Salvador.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –there — oh, oh, they weren’t there —
TERRY MORAN: Take a look at the photograph —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But they’re there now, right?
TERRY MORAN: No. What —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But they’re there now?
TERRY MORAN: They’re in your picture.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Terry.
TERRY MORAN: Ukraine, sir.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: He’s got MS-13 on his knuckles.
TERRY MORAN: Alright. I —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay?
TERRY MORAN: — we’ll — we’ll take a look at it —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s — it’s — you do such a disservice —
TERRY MORAN: We’ll take a look. We’ll take a look at that, sir —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Why don’t you just say, “Yes, he does,” and, you know, go on to something else —
TERRY MORAN: It’s contested.
The video of this exchange is even more jarring than the transcript suggests — Trump growing increasingly agitated as he insists on something demonstrably false:
This exchange is so very telling.Trump repeatedly claims the photoshopped MS-13 on Kilmar Abrego Garcia's knuckles is real, Terry Moran keeps telling him it isn't, prompting Trump to say this:"I never heard of you. I picked you. You’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed… Just say yes!"
Just to be 100% clear, the photo Trump held up has the letters M S 1 3 typed on the photo, where it was clearly meant to “explain” the actual symbols. It’s a bit hard to see but the text beneath each symbol is clearly typed on to explain things as well which (to be clear, since apparently this needs to be spelled out for some) do not actually appear on Abrego Garcia’s hand, say “Marijuana,” “Smile”, “Cross,” and “Skull.” The “Marijuana” and the “Smile” are meant to stand in for the supposed M and S of MS13.
This appears to have come via the dumbest game of “Telephone” ever, in which stupid nonsense gets passed along from one ignorant fool to another.
It started with an extremist racist MAGA account on ExTwitter who, four days before the Trump post, had posted a different picture of Garcia’s tattoos and claimed that they stood for MS13, saying “this looks like the most damning evidence yet” and then explaining his ridiculous theory:
Marijuana leaf = M
Smiley face = S
Cross coverup = 1
Skull coverup = 3
MS-13.
Note that, at this point, even he is claiming that the tattoos symbolize the characters. It seems likely that the White House team, whose brains are pickled in the ExTwitter MAGA swamps, likely saw this and decided to try to make a visual aid to match that dipshit’s “damning evidence.”
It appears they then handed their photo and visual aid to Trump, who held it up for a picture to push out on social media, but Trump is seemingly so confused that he saw the obviously typed over bits that are meant to explain the made up symbols that days ago were meant to “coverup” the true meaning… and believed they were actually on his hand, which they clearly are not.
And, just to be absolutely clear, no one who actually understands this stuff thinks those symbols mean MS-13. Every expert that everyone has spoken to gives some version of “what… no… that’s not how any of this works.”
“I don’t believe a dangerous individual would have such anodyne and farcically generic tattoos on his hand,” said Liliana Castaneda Rossmann, a California State University San Marcos emerita professor of communication and author of the book Transcending Gangs: Latinas Story Their Experience.
Sean Kennedy, a former federal public defender in California and now a Loyola Law School professor, said in his experience representing and interacting with current and former MS-13 members, “The tattoos in the photo don’t look familiar to me.”
Such designs are out of character with typicalMS-13 tattoos, Kennedy said.
“Within MS-13 culture, such markings would likely be frowned upon and even viewed as a sign of cowardice, as they could be interpreted as an attempt to hide or downplay gang affiliation,” Kennedy said. “That type of concealment goes against the gang’s norms, which often demand bold, visible demonstrations of identity and loyalty.”
Charles Katz, director of Arizona State University’s Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety, concurred.
While Katz said local law enforcement would be more familiar with specific tattoo designs in a given region, “I have worked on issues related to MS-13 for the past 15 years in El Salvador and the US, and I have never seen tattoos or graffiti suggesting that these particular tattoos are associated with MS-13.”
“These are definitely NOT MS-13 tattoos,” Thomas Ward, a University of Southern California professor who spent yearsembedded with MS-13researching the gang, and is the author of anethnography that studies MS-13, said in an email.
“Those tattoos do not prove that he’s a member of MS-13,” said Susan Phillips, a Pitzer College professor who has studied gangs and written a book on gang graffiti.
While some gangs will opt for more low-profile or ambiguous means of identifying members to evade detection from law enforcement or rival gang members, MS-13 tattoos, according to Leap, aren’t exactly subtle. They are used to market the gang’s brutality.
“MS-13 members have tattoos that say ‘MS-13,’” Leap said. “They’re not head-scratchers;they’re billboards. There’s no ambiguity.”
So, just to drive this point home: he does not have MS13 tattooed on his hand. He has four symbols, which some rando MAGA dipshit on ExTwitter claimed was a hidden MS13 message that was “covered up.” Brain-pickled White House people tried to run with that rando’s claim by creating a visual aid, and our brain-fogged President stupidly interpreted the visual aid as things that were actually on Abrego Garcia’s hand, leading him to angrily insist to a hapless ABC News anchor that he really had the actual characters M S 1 3 on his knuckles.
It’s a multi-layer cake of stupidity.
This whole debacle exposes two terrifying realities about our current moment:
First, we have a President who can’t distinguish between a visual aid created by his own staff and reality, and who becomes increasingly aggressive when confronted with facts that contradict his delusions. This isn’t just about tattoos. It’s about the most powerful man on the planet with control over our nuclear arsenal, who can’t process basic visual evidence placed directly in front of him.
Second, we have a press corps that remains paralyzed when faced with easily disprovable lies. Moran had everything he needed — the actual photos, the visual aid Trump was misinterpreting (which Trump directly offered to go get!), the experts all saying this made no sense — to decisively show the President was wrong. Instead, he retreated to “let’s agree to disagree” and “it’s contested.”
That’s not journalism. That’s stenography with a side of cowardice.
A real journalist, faced with the most powerful man on earth caught in an easily proven lie, would have pulled up the photos and shown the truth. Instead, we got multiple attempts to “move on” while looking meek and confused. The term “photoshopped” might be technically accurate, but it missed the deeper absurdity: the President of the United States couldn’t tell the difference between his staff’s explanatory text and reality. This wasn’t a cleverly “photoshopped” image designed to fool the President. It was a visual aid that the President was supposed to use to explain the tattoo symbols, yet the President… believed the visual aid markings as if they were real.
The combination — a delusional president and a timid press — is how we got here in the first place. And it’s why Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador, despite a court order and Trump’s own admission that a single phone call could bring him home.
