Kilmar Abrego Garcia to remain in jail while attorneys spar whether he'll be swiftly deported
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Kilmar Abrego Garcia will remain in jail for at least a few more days while attorneys in the federal smuggling case against him spar over whether prosecutors have the ability to prevent Abrego Garcia's deportation if he is released to await trial.
The Salvadoran national whose mistaken deportation became a flashpoint in the fight over President Donald Trump's immigration policies has been in jail since he was returned to the U.S. on June 7, facing two counts of human smuggling.
A federal Judge has ruled that Abrego Garcia has a right to be released and even set specific conditions during a court hearing on Wednesday for him to live with his brother. But Abrego Garcia's attorneys expressed concern that it would lead to his immediate detention and possible deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes also expressed doubts during the hearing about her own power to require anything more than prosecutors using their best efforts to secure the cooperation of ICE.
'I have no reservations about my ability to direct the local U.S. Attorney's office,' the judge said. 'I don't think I have any authority over ICE.'
Holmes did not say when she would file the release order for Abrego Garcia, but it will not happen before Friday afternoon.
Judge: Government dilemma 'completely of its own making'
Abrego Garcia, who was shackled and wearing a red jumpsuit, was expected to be released Wednesday, if only into ICE custody. But the court hearing revealed instead the competing interests between two federal agencies within the Trump administration.
Acting U.S. Attorney Rob McGuire has said in court and in filings that one of the reasons he wants Abrego Garcia to stay in jail is to ensure that he remains in the country and isn't deported by ICE.
McGuire told the judge during Wednesday's hearing that he would do 'the best I can' to secure the cooperation of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE. But the prosecutor noted, 'That's a separate agency with separate leadership and separate directions. I will coordinate, but I can't tell them what to do.'
But Abrego Garcia's attorney, Sean Hecker, countered that the Department of Justice and Homeland Security are both within the executive branch and seem to cooperate on other things. For example, ICE has agreed not to deport cooperating witnesses who agreed to testify against Abrego Garcia.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors had tried to stay Holmes' release order. But it was denied by another federal judge on Wednesday afternoon, who wrote that the government was asking the court to 'save it from itself' in a situation that was 'completely of its own making.'
U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. wrote that federal prosecutors should be making their arguments to DHS, not a court, 'because the Department of Justice and DHS can together prevent the harm the Government contends it faces.'
'If the Government finds this case to be as high priority as it argues here, it is incumbent upon it to ensure that Abrego is held accountable for the charges in the Indictment,' Crenshaw wrote. 'If the Department of Justice and DHS cannot do so, that speaks for itself.'
Crenshaw, however, will allow prosecutors to file a brief in support of a motion to revoke the magistrate's release order. An evidentiary hearing is scheduled for July 16.
In court on wedding anniversary
Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty on June 13 to smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify his mistaken deportation in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Those charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee, during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers. At his detention hearing, Homeland Security special agent Peter Joseph testified that he did not begin investigating Abrego Garcia until April of this year.
Holmes, the magistrate judge, wrote in a ruling on Sunday that federal prosecutors failed to show that Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or a danger to the community. He has lived for more than a decade in Maryland, where he and his American wife are raising three children.
However, Holmes referred to her own ruling as 'little more than an academic exercise,' noting that ICE plans to detain him. It is less clear what will happen after that. Although Abrego Garcia can't be deported to El Salvador — where an immigration judge found he faces a credible threat from gangs — he is still deportable to a third country as long as that country agrees to not send him to El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said during a news conference before Wednesday's hearing that it's been 106 days since he 'was abducted by the Trump administration and separated from our family.' She noted that he has missed family birthdays, graduations and Father's Day, while 'today he misses our wedding anniversary.'
Vasquez Sura said their love, their faith in God and an abundance of community support have helped them persevere.
'Kilmar should never have been taken away from us,' she said. 'This fight has been the hardest thing in my life.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump's Immigration Enforcer Crows About Winning Round-Ups Feud
Border czar Tom Homan has doubled down on ICE raids taking place on farms, telling the agriculture sector there's 'a right way and wrong way' to hire staff. The Trump administration last week paused deporting undocumented farm workers, in part after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins personally lobbied the president about the potential impact on farmers who often rely heavily on undocumented workers. But in a sign of the ongoing confusion surrounding the policy, the administration resumed the raids a few days later after reported pushback from his top immigration aide Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Homan himself, who enforces ICE's operations. Asked what he would say to farmers who remained concerned that the crackdown could affect their industries and the U.S. economy more broadly, Homan told reporters at the White House: 'Well, first of all, there's right way and wrong way to hire workers. There are legal programs that bring farm workers in.' 'Second of all, I've been saying for years, Congress needs to address this,' he added. 'Just because Congress failed, it just doesn't mean we ignore it. It's illegal to knowingly hire an illegal alien.' Trump came to office promising to embark on the biggest deportation strategy in U.S history. But behind the scenes, his economic advisers have warned him that this will prove challenging for industries such as agriculture, construction and hospitality, where employees often rely heavily on undocumented workers. Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Glenn Thompson and Florida's Carlos Gimenez have also raised concerns about the prospect of businesses shuttering or supply chains being severely disrupted. In central California, for instance, some farm workers are skipping shifts or staying off the job entirely for fear of being arrested by ICE agents and deported from the country. In New Mexico, one ICE raid left a dairy with just 20 workers, down from 55. 'You can't turn off cows,' Beverly Idsinga, the executive director of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico, told AP. 'They need to be milked twice a day, fed twice a day.' But Homan said ICE was merely enforcing the law, and priority would be given to arresting people with criminal backgrounds such as trafficking, tax evasion or forced labor. Asked about the guidance sent out in an email last week by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, which led to the pause on farms, Homan said: 'It's a matter of messaging.' 'The message is clear enough,' he insisted. 'That we're gonna continue doing worksite enforcement operations even in farms and hotels but based on a prioritized basis: Criminals come first.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
FBI Abandons Miller's Migrant Round-Up in Humiliating Blow
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's push to have the FBI assist in the Trump administration's migrant crackdown has been put on ice. Instead of going on immigration raids, sources told Fox News and NBC News that the majority of FBI agents on immigration duty are now returning to traditional roles to thwart possible threats from Iran and its proxies. The pivot back to counterterrorism will place FBI agents in a more traditional role. It comes a month after Miller mandated ICE make at least 3,000 migrant arrests a day in a heated meeting at its D.C. headquarters. NBC reported at the time that 2,000 agents from the FBI, DEA, and the Marshals Service were ordered to embed with ICE to boost arrest numbers. Many of those agents are now being pulled back to their day jobs. 'Guess they are realizing this whole national security thing is important, after all,' a source with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC. The FBI wrote in a statement that it 'does not comment on specific operational adjustments or personnel decisions.' 'However, we continuously assess and realign our resources to respond to the most pressing threats to our national security and to ensure the safety of the American people,' the statement added. ABC News reported that many of the agents who were briefly ordered to work with ICE had been pulled from monitoring 'counterterrorism and cyber issues.' Sources told the network that the FBI's recall of a 'couple thousand agents' is a direct result of the U.S. bombing of Iran, which has raised fears of retaliation stateside. President Donald Trump announced Monday that Israel and Iran had reached a ceasefire. However, Iran trolled Trump later in the day and declared that its nuclear program, which Trump said was 'obliterated' by U.S. bombers, will 'resume without interruption.' It is unclear if ICE's daily quota arrests will be lowered now that it is losing a large swatch of support provided by the FBI. The agency has pivoted from prioritizing undocumented immigrants accused of crimes to targeting anyone in the country without documentation, including lowly-paid farmworkers in California, day workers at Home Depot locations, and even high school student asylum seekers.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
‘New Yorkers have been betrayed': can Zohran Mamdani become the most progressive mayor in the city's history?
Zohran Kwame Mamdani is huddling with advisers surrounded by agitated protesters, New York police department (NYPD) officers and lines of metal barriers penning us in. An hour ago Brad Lander, the elected comptroller of New York who is running against Mamdani in the race to become the city's next mayor, was arrested by masked agents of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as he accompanied an individual out of immigration court. Video shows the agents shoving Lander against a wall, handcuffing him, and scuffling him away. The incident has clearly rattled Mamdani. He looks tense, and when greeted by supporters his trademark beaming smile is replaced by a tight grin. Days earlier Mamdani cross-endorsed with fellow progressive Lander ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary, which makes this personal. 'This is horrifying,' he says. Behind us looms the brutalist tower of the Federal Building, its tombstone-grey granite and glass exterior wrapped in fine mist. It is a setting out of a dystopian Gotham City. 'No peace, no justice,' the protesters chant. 'Ice out of the court, Ice out of the city.' 'This is an authoritarian regime that has dispatched masked men in unmarked cars to detain and disappear as many immigrants as they can find, and anyone standing in their way,' Mamdani says. 'Ice agents attempted to rough up Comptroller Lander and make an example of him – if that's what they are willing to do to an elected official, what will they do to an unknown immigrant?' There is a potent family link too. 'That's the very court I took my father to a few months ago for his citizenship interview,' he explains. 'I hugged him tightly, not knowing if I would see him at the end or if he too would be detained, as so many immigrants have been. I waited in a coffee shop for four and a half hours hoping he would come downstairs, and he did.' It is not impossible, given the state of the race, that in three days' time Mamdani, until recently a virtual unknown, will prevail in the primary ballot and take a giant leap towards becoming the next occupant of Gracie Mansion. Should he go on to win the general election in November, he would be propelled onto the front lines of the battle to protect New Yorkers from Donald Trump's mass deportations and other legally-dubious incursions. Could he handle it? 'I do believe that I could. I will unabashedly stand up for our sanctuary city policies which have kept New Yorkers safe, and use every tool at the city's disposal to protect our immigrants.' And then he adds: 'There is no option of surrender.' That Mamdani should be a serious contender for the leadership of America's largest city is both a sign of the times and of his individual capabilities. Polls show him within striking distance of the frontrunner Andrew Cuomo in what is now essentially a two-horse race, with Lander trailing a distant third. Mamdani came to the US aged seven from Uganda where he was born to parents of Indian descent. His father is a political scientist Mahmood Mamdani, and his mother, Mira Nair, is the Oscar-nominated director of Salaam Bombay! and Monsoon Wedding. He is a democratic socialist endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He has been outspoken on the Gaza war, which he views as a genocide, and is unrestrained in his criticism of Trump, whom he calls an authoritarian. He denounced Lander's arrest as 'fascism'. He is equally scathing about the establishment of the Democratic party, which he tells me has 'betrayed' the people of New York. And yet here he is, an unashamed progressive Muslim immigrant, snapping at the heels of the ultimate Democratic machine politician, the thrice-elected former governor of New York, Cuomo. The outcome of the ranked-choice vote could illuminate so much more than the future of New York, important though that is. There's age. Mamdani, if elected, would become at 33 the youngest mayor in a century; Cuomo, 67, would be its oldest in a first term. Could this election deliver a blow to what Ocasio-Cortez has called the 'gerontocracy' of American politics? There's Trump. Lander's arrest could be just the start – only a day before the comptroller was apprehended, the president announced he was prioritizing deportations from New York and other Democratic-run cities, putting whoever wins the mayoral race in the line of fire. And there's the Democratic party itself. Mamdani calls the election a referendum on the future of the party – and given the parlous state in which it currently finds itself, trapped in the headlights of a president who appears hell-bent on destroying American democracy as we know it, he may not be wrong. This is gearing up to be a seismic clash at a turning point for the country. No wonder Mamdani looks tense. Our interview was not meant to be like this. The plan was for us to meet in Mamdani's campaign office near Madison Square Park, but the shock of the Lander arrest sends him scrambling down to Federal Plaza, the Guardian in hot pursuit. It's a bit like a game of cat and mouse. We follow the candidate as he moves away from Federal Building, and takes off with his posse of campaign managers to find a quiet place to talk. He says we'll regroup at a sandwich bar nearby then abruptly changes the location, but amid the confusion he's always impeccably polite. 'Thank you for your understanding,' he says to me. We finally get to sit down in a Le Pain Quotidien around the corner from where Lander is being detained. Mamdani asks if I mind that he eats while we talk – it's mid-afternoon by now and it's his first meal of the day. When I express sympathy, he gives a maudlin smile and says: 'I chose this.' We begin by discussing his explosive rise, from a barely known member of the state assembly representing Queens into a political phenomenon. The previous Saturday, at a rally at Terminal 5, a music venue in Hell's Kitchen, Mamdani was introduced by Ocasio-Cortez, who likened how he has burst onto the scene to her own unlikely eruption as Bronx bartender turned congresswoman in 2018. Did Mamdani expect to be where he is now when he launched his run last October? From the start he believed in the possibility of his campaign, he says, but did not expect his numbers to surge until the end. 'Instead we've been firmly in second place for the last few months, and we've narrowed a 40-point gap with Cuomo down to single digits despite Republican billionaires spending close to $20m in attack ads against me.' That Mamdani has caught the imagination of young New Yorkers is self-evident at the Saturday night rally. The venue is packed with over 3,000 supporters, most in their 20s and 30s, waving placards saying 'A City We Can Afford'. Comedian the Kid Mero hosts, a marching band performs Empire State of Mind, and the DJ plays hope and change-themed tracks (the rally closes with Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'). It all has the razzmatazz of a premature victory party. Mamdani commands the stage, displaying an ease with TikTokable soundbites and a beguiling charisma which are essential qualifications for high office these days. He echoes the lyrical rhetoric of Barack Obama: when he wins on 24 June, he orates, 'it will feel like the dawn of a new day, and when the sun finally climbs above the horizon that light will seem brighter than ever'. A key to his success among young voters – and in turn, the amassing of a vast army of 46,000 volunteers who have knocked on more than a million doors – has been his savvy use of social media. He has posted a stream of viral videos, shot on gritty New York streets, infused with the humor and pace that he first honed during his younger years when he was an aspiring rapper going by the name of Mr Cardamom. To publicise his plan to freeze the rents of all rent-stabilised apartments, Mamdani posted a TikTok video in which he dives fully clothed into the frigid waters off Coney Island. It was titled: 'I'm freezing … your rent.' If I tell you that I'm going to freeze your rent, you know exactly what I mean Zohran Mamdani When Cuomo entered the mayoral race, Mamdani filmed in front of Trump Tower to visually connect the two men as bullies accused of sexual misconduct – Trump was found liable for sexual abuse, Cuomo was forced to resign as governor in 2021 following reports that he sexually harassed female staff, which he denies. Such grabby stuff has spawned a whole cluster of fan-based Instagram groups. Among them: Hot Girls for Zohran and, not to be outdone, Hot Boys for Zohran. Fun this may be. But it's also serious politics. It's earned him the adoration of countless young voters at a time when social media is increasingly critical to winning elections – just ask Trump who, with his 106 million X followers and his Truth Social platform, literally owns political social media, leaving most Democratic leaders languishing in the wilderness. 'New Yorkers of all ages are engaging with the world around them through their phones,' Mamdani says. 'One reason we've been able to get so many to engage with us is that they've heard about our politics in places they typically would not.' He calls his social media strategy the 'politics of no translation'. What is that? 'It's when you speak directly to the crises that people are facing, with no intermediaries in between. We need a politics that is direct, that speaks to people's own lives. If I tell you that I'm going to freeze your rent, you know exactly what I mean.' Mamdani puts his spectacular popularity with young New Yorkers down to a hunger for a 'new kind of politics, one that puts working people at the heart of it and showcases a new generation of leadership'. There's maybe something else also at play: he has a magnetism that just seems to draw people towards him. The young waiter who takes his order of grilled chicken salad appears starstruck, and after we finish talking the waiter comes back to the table and engages Mamdani in intense conversation. The candidate obliges, despite his frantic schedule that will see him dashing between boroughs late into the night. I get flashes of that magnetism as we sit at our table. Like any politician, Mamdani has his talking points, but he drops his guard when I ask him what he remembers about arriving in New York as a kid. He leans towards me, and his face opens, and he seems transported. 'I remember going to Tower Records around 66th Street or so, and browsing all the different CDS, then stepping outside and buying my first bootleg copy of Eiffel 65, the euro pop group with the song Blue (Da Ba Dee). I remember playing soccer in Riverside Park, I remember falling in love with chess.' Reverie over, Mamdani the mayoral candidate is back, shoveling down food in between espousing political strategy. And this is when we get down to it, and the real challenge he faces. Because his appeal to young New Yorkers is not enough to win. To defeat Cuomo on Tuesday he has to reach beyond young voters. He has to get to the older African Americans and Hispanics in the outer boroughs who dependably turn out to vote, and thus often decide the outcome of New York Democratic primaries. Polls suggest that such voters are still favouring Cuomo as a safe pair of hands, though there has been a recent uptick among older Latinos. Mamdani is candid about how hard this has been. 'It was very difficult for us to get into these spaces to make our case,' he admits. 'Especially as we began with 1% name recognition. But things are shifting, now we're finding that we are double-booked for churches on a Sunday morning.' Paradoxically, the outer borough communities that he has to convert are home to the very same voters with whom Trump made astonishing inroads last November. It's the guilty secret of New York, which is so proud of its status as a liberal bastion: Trump enjoyed his biggest swing of any state in the country here – about 11.5% – and increased his vote by double digits in both the Bronx and Queens. 'It wasn't just the scale of the swing,' Mamdani says. 'It was that it took place far from the caricature of Trump voters, and into the heart of immigrant New York.' After Trump's victory, Mamdani had to turn the political impulse of lecturing into listening and went on a listening tour to the outer boroughs. 'I went to Fordham Road in the Bronx and Hillside Avenue in Queens, and asked these New Yorkers, most of whom are Democrats, who they voted for and why. I learned that many did not vote, and many voted for Trump, and they did so because they remembered having more money in their pocket four years ago.' The plea he heard over and over again was for an economic agenda that would make people's tough lives easier. 'And that is how we have run this race,' he says. That's where his affordability ticket kicks in. Rents will be frozen in rent-stabilised apartments that house 2 million New Yorkers, two-thirds of whom are people of colour. Childcare will be provided at no cost, the minimum wage will be raised, city-run groceries will be opened offering cheaper healthy food, buses will be made fast and free. To pay for all that, taxes will be raised for corporations and for the top 1% of earners with incomes above $1m. When I ask him to imagine how he imagines New York would look after he had been in Gracie Mansion for two terms, he replies: 'It is a city that is more affordable, that works better, and where we have restored public excellence into public service.' New Yorkers have been betrayed by the politics of our city Zohran Mamdani Mamdani's affordability manifesto is a conscious blueprint for reconnecting working-class Americans, of all races, back to the Democratic party in the fight against Trump. It's also a damning indictment of where he believes the Democratic leadership has gone wrong. He goes so far as to use that word 'betrayal'. 'New Yorkers have been betrayed by the politics of our city,' he says. As evidence he points to Trump's deportations. We're still sitting in Le Pain Quotidien, Mamdani's salad now half-eaten and his tie off, and we are both painfully, though unspokenly, aware that Lander remains in custody as we speak (he was released a few hours later without charge). Up to 400,000 New Yorkers are at risk of Trump's deportations, he says, yet under the current Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, whose corruption charges were dropped by Trump in what was widely seen as a quid pro quo, the city has assisted fewer than 200 people facing imminent removal. Mamdani pledges that under his leadership, the city would provide legal representation for all immigrants in detention proceedings. That would boost their chances of going home to their families some elevenfold. His critique of the Democratic party doesn't end there. For him, Cuomo is the epitome of where the established party has gone off the rails. 'I believe we lost the presidential election because we had left the working class behind a long time ago. They were told time and time again that their leaders would fight for them, and those leaders, like Andrew Cuomo, sold them out.' He's in his flow now, his arms flapping in grand gestures of the sort that his staff have worked hard to get him to tone down. There's animation in his portrayal of Cuomo, containing a hefty dose of venom, and even disgust. 'We are considering electing a former governor who resigned in disgrace, one who cut Medicaid, stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA [which runs the subway], hounded the more than a dozen women who credibly accused him of sexual harassment even suing them for their gynecological records. It begs the question: what high ground do we have in the Democratic party when we critique Donald Trump?' Towards the end of his Terminal 5 rally speech, Mamdani warned his supporters to expect a barrage of negative attack ads from Cuomo and his billionaire backers in the closing stage of the race. But it's not just the barrage of TV ads that are attacking Zohran. The most withering criticism has come from the New York Times editorial board, which went so far as to opine that he didn't deserve a spot on the ballot. Mamdani swats that one away with the curt remark: 'These are the opinions of about a dozen New Yorkers. They're entitled to them.' The paper described his proposals as unrealistic. That's paradoxical, he says. Working-class Americans are losing faith in the Democratic party, yet anyone who comes up with policies that address their daily struggles is castigated for being pie in the sky. 'If you want to fight for working people priced out of their own city, then you are told you are out of touch.' The Anti-Defamation League, the Holocaust Museum, and several Jewish leaders have also blast out to scorch him in the final stretch. Shortly after we meet, a podcast is posted by the Bulwark in which Mamdani was asked whether he felt uncomfortable about the use by some pro-Palestinians of the phrase 'globalize the intifada', which has been condemned by some Jews as a call to violence. He would not denounce the expression, saying it spoke to 'a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights'. The comment led to rapid backlash from some Jewish groups. That was just the latest in a pattern in which, stepping outside a campaign tightly focused on affordability, he has been prepared to speak out about the highly contentious issue of the Middle East. What high ground do we have in the Democratic party when we critique Donald Trump? Zohran Mamdani He has decried the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and championed the cause of Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian student activist at Columbia University who was released on Friday after more than three months detention on the orders of a federal judge. Given the nature of his economically-focused campaign, wouldn't it have been expedient to skirt around the issue of Gaza? . 'I have always been honest,' he says. 'I am honest because I believe it is incumbent upon us to have a new kind of politics, consistent with international law, and I believe there are far more New Yorkers looking for that consistency than one would imagine.' Mamdani has clearly been riled by the attacks made on him, which he calls Islamophobic. 'I have been smeared and slandered in clear racist language,' he says, pointing to mailers from a Cuomo-supporting super PAC which altered his face to be darker and his beard to be thicker (the super PAC denied any intentional manipulation). In the days after our interview, the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force announced they are investigating threats made against Mamdani, by an unidentified man who said he was a 'terrorist' who is 'not welcome in America'. None of this is new for him. He's had to deal with Islamophobia since 9/11, when he was nine and had been living in the city for just two years. He was spared the worst of the anti-Muslim fallout of the attacks, he says, partly thanks to a kind teacher who pulled him aside and told him to let her know if he was ever bullied. But 9/11 left its mark. 'Living in the shadows of that moment, it politicized my identity. It forced a nine-year-old boy to see himself the way the world was seeing him.' That young boy is now three days away from a vote in which he seeks to become the first Muslim mayor of New York City. As he finishes up his salad and downs a cup of hot water with honey and lemon, before rushing off to his next engagement, he looks a strange mix of bone tired and fired-up for the battle ahead.
