Left to right: Kilmar Abrego Garcia attends a protest rally at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025 (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough), Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference at the Nashville International Airport, Thursday, July 17, 2025, in Nashville, Tennessee (AP Photo/George Walker IV), and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks at a press briefing with U.S. President Donald Trump in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House in Washington, DC on Friday, June 27, 2025 (Annabelle Gordon/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images).
Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia are imploring a federal judge to sanction the Trump administration over extrajudicial comments made by a top immigration enforcement official on television last month.
The latest demand follows an initial request for sanctions days after Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino made a series of remarks about the wrongfully deported Salvadoran man during appearances on Fox News and Newsmax, as Law&Crime previously reported.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice responded by arguing the government "does not have editorial control of news chyrons," that Bovino did not explicitly name Abrego Garcia, and that his statements were a protected response to the defendant's.
On Tuesday, Abrego Garcia's lawyers accused the DOJ of trying to obfuscate by raising issues irrelevant to the dispute at hand.
"The government has, time and again, trampled over the Court's commendably measured efforts to protect Mr. Abrego's fair-trial right," the eight-page reply memorandum reads at one point.
That dispute, the defense claims, concerns the court's gag order.
"Once again, the government has responded to a Court order with which it disagrees by pretending it doesn't exist," the Tuesday memo begins. "Mr. Abrego moved for sanctions based on senior DHS official Gregory Bovino's flagrant violation of this Court's October 27 Order governing extrajudicial statements relating to this case. The government's brief opposing that motion largely ignores the Order."
In the defense's view, the government's response relied on a mere reference to the local rule on which the gag order is based.
In late August, the man whose case assumed outsized importance and became a flashpoint in the second Trump administration's immigration agenda asked U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw to issue a gag order against several officials – and especially U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem.
By late October, the court more or less ruled in the defendant's favor; an opinion and order made clear the court would enforce a local rule that "prohibits DOJ and DHS employees from making extrajudicial statements that will 'have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing' Abrego's right to a 'fair trial,'" assuming a trial occurs.
Abrego Garcia argued the government, through Bovino, "repeatedly violated" the court's order and the local rule on which it is based with statements that are both "inappropriate and prejudicial."
The government, in its response, mostly couched its defense of Bovino's remarks under the auspices of the local rule – saying the statements made on Fox News and Newsmax were "necessary to 'protect a client'—here, the United States of America and its People—from conduct like the Defendant's and his advocates' that creates a 'substantial undue prejudicial effect' in an ongoing proceeding."
To hear the DOJ tell it, Bovino had to make the disputed comments because of statements made by Abrego Garcia in early December after the Maryland federal judge in his civil case ordered his release.
On Dec. 12, Abrego Garcia, flanked by an activist offering a real-time translation, spoke out in Spanish. He said he "will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me" and believed "this injustice will come to an end," according to the translator and the DOJ's account of the brief press conference.
Notably, the Trump administration's response also takes issue with the court's order and the local rule on First Amendment grounds.
In other words, the government believes the parties are in a tit-for-tat battle envisioned – and covered – by the local rule, which allows the executive branch, here meaning Bovino, to respond. At the same time, the government says the rule "does not apply" to Bovino at all.
Not so, says the defense.
Rather, Abrego Garcia's lawyers remind Crenshaw that the gag order expressly applies to "governmental agency employees" including "[e]mployees of DOJ and DHS" and puts them "on notice that they are prohibited from making any 'extrajudicial statement…that the [individual] knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by public communication that will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing" the case.
"The government largely ignores that Mr. Bovino's statements independently violated the Order," the reply goes on. "And in any case, neither he nor the government was free to simply disregard that clear Order based on their disagreement with it."
The defense goes on to recall how the government did try to litigate the gag order itself, "albeit on unrelated ground," but did not object to the part of the order restricting DHS employees. And, the defense belabors the point here, Bovino is an employee of DHS.
"The government's disregard of the Order is only the latest example of its improper efforts to relitigate the Court's rulings by pretending they do not exist," Abrego Garcia's reply continues.
The defense also savages the claim that Bovino's comments were necessary to protect the government's interest by arguing that a criminal defendant making generalized comments about his own case could in no way be considered in violation of the local rule.
"If the government incorrectly thought the Rule was violated, its remedy was to file its own motion, not to have a senior official engage in bad-faith self help," the reply goes on. "The government knows better, even if its hyperbolic opposition suggests otherwise."
Additionally, the reply memo adds more grist to the sanctions mill – accusing the government of a brand new violation.
From the filing at length:
Indeed, the government doubled down on those baseless accusations—and again violated the Order—when it complained publicly about Mr. Abrego's motion. On December 27, 2025, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin shared a post on X stating: "MS-13 terrorist Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released by a rogue judge and is now making TikToks." Ms. McLaughlin added: "So we, at @DHSgov, are under gag order by an activist judge and Kilmar Abrego Garcia is making TikToks. American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement and give megaphones to those who oppose our legal system." Neither Mr. Bovino's nor Ms. McLaughlin's statements "protect" the government—they defame Mr. Abrego, this Court, and the Federal District Court for the District of Maryland.
Abrego Garcia's attorneys want Crenshaw to order the government to hand over discovery explaining whether Bovino and McLaughlin were made aware of the gag order by the DOJ, which authorized them to speak about the case, and any guidance they received.
Matt Naham contributed to this report.
Comments