Abrego Garcia’s Elite Lawyers Win More Jail Time to Avoid Deportation

The expensive lawyers working for El Salvador’s most famous illegal migrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, persuaded a judge to keep him in federal jail.

The elite lawyers told the judge that if he were released from jail by the Department of Justice, he would be quickly deported by the Department of Homeland Security.

“We respectfully request to delay the issuance of the release order until the July 16 hearing on the government’s motion for revocation,” said a Friday, June 27 plea by lawyers from New York-based Hecker Fink LLP. The plea explains:

Yesterday, at an emergency hearing before Judge Xinis in the District of Maryland, the government represented that it intends to detain Mr. Abrego and remove him to a “third country” as soon as this Court releases Mr. Abrego from pretrial custody. This is the first time the government has represented, to anyone, that it intended not to deport Mr. Abrego back to El Salvador following a trial on these charges, but to deport him to a third country immediately.

On Friday afternoon, the federal judge agreed to keep Abrego Garcia in jail for several more days: “A hearing will be set by separate order to review conditions of release with Abrego and to provide for his release.”

Last Sunday, the judge in Tennessee announced she would release the migrant from jail.

On Friday, the Department of Justice told the judge:

The Government in this case has previously and clearly advised this Court (and Judge Crenshaw) that the Defendant may face deportation should he be released from U.S. Marshals’ custody. (DE # 14, 46). Given that the Defendant was first deemed deportable back in 2019 … this should not be a surprise to the defense and is certainly not a surprise to this Court.

The government decided to bring Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador amid massive pressure from the courts and Democrats.

Now, his elite-funded lawyers are also complaining about the government’s new criminal charges against him:

In a just world, he would not seek to prolong his detention further. And yet the government—a government that has, at all levels, told the American people that it is bringing Mr. Abrego back home to the United States to face “American justice” —apparently has little interest in actually bringing this case to trial. Instead, it has chosen to bring Mr. Abrego back only to convict him in the court of public opinion, including with respect to allegations found nowhere in the actual charges, while boldly announcing that Mr. Abrego “will not walk free in our country again.”

Many Democrats rallied around the illegal migrant, despite accusations that he beat his wife several times, served as a street hustler for the dangerous MS-13 gang, and worked as an illegal labor trafficker over several years.

But the fight is a clear political loser for Democrats: A June poll by Harvard/Harris shows that 62 percent of registered voters say he is “likely a[n] MS-13 gang member.”

Democrats and their allied media outlets are mostly ignoring the legal fight as they argue that the battle is over legal principles, not Abrego Garcia’s deportation.