U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem attends a press conference with Chilean Minister of Public Security Luis Cordero Vega (not pictured), in Santiago, Chile, July 30, 2025. REUTERS/Pablo Sanhueza
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is filing for a gag order to stop Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from publicly attacking his character, Politico reported on Thursday night.
"The request submitted Thursday to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville is the third time defense attorneys have complained that public statements from government officials are threatening Abrego’s right to a fair trial," reported Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein. Furthermore, this move comes after "a torrent of invective in recent days from President Donald Trump, Noem, Bondi and other close Trump allies, who have leveled salacious allegations against Abrego that he fervently denies."
Abrego, a Salvadoran immigrant who lives with his family in Maryland, has become the center of a massively high-profile series of legal battles as the Trump administration has sought to assert its will over immigration policy.
The administration deported him to the infamous CECOT megaprison in El Salvador earlier this year, in violation of a federal judge's standing order not to deport him to that specific country. High-ranking Trump officials spent months quashing any legal attempt to return him to the country, while claiming they had no jurisdiction over him once he was in El Salvador.
Eventually, after intense public backlash and outcry, as well as a Supreme Court ruling, the administration repatriated him to the United States, but immediately detained him and announced human smuggling charges against him, claiming he was part of a trafficking operation on behalf of the transnational criminal gang MS-13.
Abrego has consistently denied any gang affiliation or other wrongdoing, and legal experts are skeptical the charges have any basis beyond simple retaliation.
As all of this litigation has been going on, the Trump administration moved earlier this week to begin the process to deport Abrego to Uganda, a country to which he has no ties whatsoever. A federal judge intervened, saying he cannot be deported until at least October.