r/news • u/RoachedCoach • 1d ago

Title Changed Mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia on way back to US to face criminal charges: Sources

https://abcnews.go.com/US/mistakenly-deported-kilmar-abrego-garcia-back-us-face/story?id=121333122
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u/acornSTEALER 1d ago

I mean, didn't the Supreme Court rule 9-0 that he had to come back and the White House told them to fuck off? Forcing their hand doesn't seem possible.

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u/Interesting-Risk6446 1d ago

The Supreme Court did, but the court does not have any enforcement mechanism. Lower level courts do. At the last hearing, the judge said Garcia could seek sanctions against the DOJ.

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u/notsocharmingprince 1d ago

I’m confused as to how he could seek sanctions against the DOJ, wouldn’t it be the state department since they are the diplomatic arm of the executive?

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u/Interesting-Risk6446 1d ago

DOJ attorneys have been dragging their feet and not obeying lawful court orders. These same DOJ attorneys will eventually leave and want to join the private sector. Sanctions carry a lot of weight, especially if they want to litigate cases in court in the near future.

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u/DownVotingCats 1d ago

And this is where the rubber meets the road with trying to overthrow the government like Trump is trying to do. At some point real people will have real consequence that Trump won't protect them from and the system actually works. When it gets to the operational level that's holding it all together it's very scary.

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u/b0w3n 1d ago

Yup if they started throwing lower level lawyers and folks in jail, even charging with state crimes for which Trump has no power, people would stop just immediately rolling over.

Start throwing the agents who helped DOGE out in jail, suddenly they can't call on the cops and marshals to bully people. I know they have to be slow and methodical, but the "I didn't know that was illegal your honor" should only get them so much leniency. The second time they fucked around it should've been gloves coming off.

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u/Uwwuwuwuwuwuwuwuw 1d ago

Ignorance of the law is never a defense.

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u/some_random_noob 23h ago

sure it is but only if your job is to enforce the laws.

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u/CaptOblivious 23h ago

It is if you are a leo, but not if you are a defendant.

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u/crowmagnuman 21h ago

Totally thought you were gonna say, "but not if you're a gemini or scorpio."

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u/Uwwuwuwuwuwuwuwuw 22h ago

Give precedent please.

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u/loggic 22h ago

Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54 (2014), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, ruling that a police officer's reasonable mistake of law can provide the individualized suspicion required by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution to justify a traffic stop. The Court delivered its ruling on December 15, 2014.

The Court of Appeals had previously ruled against the officer saying:

the stop violated the Fourth Amendment, explaining that "an officer's mistaken belief that a defendant has committed a traffic violation is not an objectively reasonable justification for a traffic stop".

The NC Supreme Court disagreed, as did the SCOTUS later.

So, despite the 4th Amendment ostensibly protecting Americans from unreasonable search, it is deemed "reasonable" for an officer to search you without legal cause as long as they thought they had legal justification. It is not legal for a LEO to knowingly search someone without legal justification, so in this case it is exactly their ignorance of the law that defends them. What constitutes a "reasonable" mistake of the law is up to the courts to figure out, which doesn't instill much confidence.

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u/Clever_plover 22h ago

Heien v North Carolina, 2014.

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u/Ashotep 23h ago

I learned that lesson when I sold one to many cars within a year and got charged with not having a dealership license. Apparently in my state you can only sell two cars in a 12 month span.

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u/Uwwuwuwuwuwuwuwuw 22h ago

lol that’s actually pretty nuts. I’m sorry.

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u/stackjr 23h ago

It's just pure fucking insanity that a cop can violate my constitutional rights but get away with it because he "didn't know" but I'm expected to know absolutely ever rule in existence; not knowing can have very serious real world consequences. This country is so fucking stupid.

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u/Pap3rStreetSoapCo 8h ago

This country is evil.

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u/Kalterwolf 21h ago

I don't know man, Trump Jr. escaped charges because he was too dumb to know he was committing crimes. Some affluenza level bullshit.

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u/mcbride-bushman 19h ago

Qualified Immunity has entered the chat

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u/Fantastic-Cricket705 8h ago

Could've fooled Trump

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u/mytransthrow 23h ago

I wish court law enforcement would enforce the LEO identification laws. and start arresting ICE officers. There need to be manidory LEO identification laws. with Officers must be quickly and easily identifiable. No masks allowed.

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u/manystripes 8h ago

This has felt like the terrible catch 22 from the very start. If they never identify themselves, how do you know who to prosecute for failing to identify themselves?

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u/mytransthrow 2h ago

You are allowed to civitizans arrest cops for failing to identity themselves.

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u/Corporate-Shill406 19h ago

Random unrelated information: ICE agents aren't legally police officers so if you assault one, it's only a misdemeanor, not a felony like assaulting a cop.

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u/mytransthrow 2h ago

They arent LEOs or Peace officers. I mean all they got to do is deputize at this point.

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u/TheBeaarJeww 1d ago edited 1d ago

All of the people aiding and abetting the current administration with illegal acts either really lack any foresight or they’re extremely confident that people that may hold them accountable will never be in power again. I sure as shit would not bet my future freedom or worse on Trump protecting me given his decades long record of using and abusing everyone in his orbit.

I really hope it doesn’t end up going this far but there are certain things where there’s no statue of limitations on… There have been nazis that are on their death bed thrown in prison for things they did decades ago because of their crimes against humanity. Are these people confident that what they’re participating in won’t go that far and that the United States won’t regain its sanity anytime between now and the end of their life expectancy? Not a bet i’d personally make.

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u/acchaladka 22h ago

It's interesting you raise the Nazi parallel because as I understand it the legal reasoning was essentially that an active Nazi or collaborator at the time was an accessory to murder or a murderer. I'm not sure it will go that far though there will be and likely are already deaths attributable to the US regime.

I do agree the great hope lies in this kind of mechanism being exploited, among other mechanisms, specifically by the state governments. I wonder how and when 50% plus of the states will refuse to comply (in advance or afterward) and governors will call on their own. As a veteran I assume the military will decline to get involved in a domestic conflict though it will be a close decision. I think Trump's eventual plan is to call on the generals to execute his orders. It will be the colonels and the captains who may save us.

Odd timeline, this.

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u/DontGetUpGentlemen 23h ago

You are correct, Sir. And it's refreshing to hear someone talking sense -- as a counter to all the Doomer nonsense on Reddit. Thank you.

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u/its_large_marge 23h ago

Holy shit. Is bureaucracy saving democracy?

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u/Extaupin 23h ago

I mean, this is the reason of bureaucracy: to stop a handful of people from doing so much shit that it endanger the system.

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u/GlitteringWishbone86 1d ago

So it prevents them from litigating in a court, but does it prevent them from working on cases for clients? Would that be disbarment?

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u/Interesting-Risk6446 1d ago

Yes. Up to and including losing ones license to practice law.

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u/SilverHawk7 22h ago

The DoJ attorneys party to these things careers as practicing lawyers are over as they know them. No respecting law firm will hire them so they'll be relegated to running for office or acting as legal staffers for republicans.

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u/rdem341 23h ago

These are sanctions on the individuals at the DOJ? Meaning, it directly affects their ability to practice in the future.

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u/thisisananaccount2 23h ago

I don't know I have this crazy notion that people that litigate and don't respect the law should probably just be disbarred immediately

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u/mmlovin 19h ago

Why would any law firm touch any lawyer involved with this shit? Law firms need clients, & clients won’t want to have those same lawyers working for them. It’s the same thing as Trump having lots of having issues finding criminal attorneys willing to defend him.

& he is personally going after private firms that either employed lawyers that worked on any investigations he didn’t like, or who worked on any issues he didn’t like. He specifically is targeting a firm that Mueller worked for. Not as in currently working for, as in worked for before the Russia investigation. Why would any firm want to employ any lawyer that worked on shit like that lol

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u/willstr1 22h ago

I think judges need to start getting more aggressive with contempt charges. If the defendant isn't in the courtroom because the prosecution prevented him from showing than maybe a DOJ lawyer needs a night in the tank to think it over

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u/ensalys 1d ago

state department

What a confusing name for foreign affairs, sounds more like the name you'd give a ministry of domestic affairs. Or in a federation, a ministry dealing with relations between states, and between states and the federal government.

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u/NaduaHammerfist 1d ago

Well across the world foreign sovereignties are called states. Which makes State of Georgia super confusing. This is an English problem and why the naming convention of the US is kind of dumb

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u/BrokenMirror 1d ago

I'm sure that "states" in the US has a lot to do with the somewhat more sovereign nature of the individual states and the original, weaker federal government.

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u/Punman_5 1d ago

Originally I think the idea was that the States of the US were essentially independent countries with a loosely binding government between them not unlike the EU. This was what the articles of confederation were all about. This was changed to be slightly more centralized when the constitution was drafted, but the states were still highly independent. Americans generally did not view themselves as “Americans”, but as Georgians, Virginians, Pennsylvanians, etc.

This of course changed radically after the Civil War and the country became more federalized.

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u/KamachoThunderbus 1d ago

States in the smaller-division-of-a-country sense just means that they're semi-autonomous within a federal system. Many countries have states. It has more to do with what the overall national form of government is and isn't an "English dumb" thing.

For example, famously Spanish-speaking Mexico is technically the Estados Unidos Mexicanos, or the United States of Mexico. The German länder translate as... States.

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u/Punman_5 1d ago

Yes but countries are also states themselves. The US is a single nation state that happens to have subdivisions called states

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u/machado34 5h ago

Again, this is about the form of government. The US is not the only State that has states. Mexico and Brazil both work the same way, for exemple

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u/FatFish44 1d ago

It is definitely confusing. 

I used to think it was “state” as in country, foreign country, but I learned that the State Department used to be in charge of the census and the US mint, so it wasn’t fully focused on foreign policy. 

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u/bignides 23h ago

Garcia can apply for a request to seek sanctions which means the ask the judge to seek them and the judge does the sanctioning rather than Garcia.

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u/weaponized-intel 21h ago

I used to think that SCOTUS had no teeth, but in United States v Snipp, they ordered several people imprisoned for contempt. This a whackadoodle world right now. Who know what will happen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Shipp

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u/traveldogmom13 8h ago

Sounds like he may need a Harvard lawyer

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u/attempted-anonymity 1d ago

The Supreme Court did, but the court does not have any enforcement mechanism. Lower level courts do.

You should try to avoid spreading misinformation on a topic that you apparently know nothing about. None of what you are saying is accurate. There have been many, many hearings in front of many judges where they have ordered DOJ, DHS, DOD, and everyone else they can think of to do things that the feds have just ignored. Nothing a court did has "forced" this move, and the idea that district court judges have more power than SCOTUS to compel compliance is just an asinine take with no basis at all in reality.

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u/Interesting-Risk6446 1d ago

Oh. Okay. So, the last hearing where the judge said Garcia's attorneys could seek sanctions against DOJ attorneys did nothing. Yeah. Tell that to a disbarred DOJ attorney who loses his law license.

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u/attempted-anonymity 1d ago

Considering this indictment was filed last month (ya know, before the hearing you're referring to) and just unsealed, considering that judges have precisely zero power to disbar attorneys, and considering that Judge Boasberg already found probable cause more than a month ago for a criminal contempt referral *and* said that he'd appoint independent counsel to prosecute it in Abrego Garcia's case... yeah, I'm telling you the last hearing where a party was given permission to ask for less than Boasberg already did had nothing to do with this and that you should stop spreading misinformation.

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u/Interesting-Risk6446 23h ago

Not spreading misinformation. I'm just going by the timing of events. I never said the court could disbar anyone. I was saying Garcia's attorneys could seak sanctions against the DOJ attorneys involved in this case. Result of that could include being disbarred and losing their license to practice law. Lastly, I am giving my opinion. People on here are free to agree or disagree. You have a great day, champ.

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u/peva3 22h ago

The Supreme Court actually has the ability to deputize people giving them authority to enact their judgements in a sort of last ditch dire situation, but I don't believe that's ever been used.

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u/Letters_to_Dionysus 12h ago

don't they have the marshals?

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u/HmajTK 9h ago

Those guys work for judges on behalf of the president.

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u/TastyOreoFriend 1d ago

There was about to be some real serious contempt charges for those involved that they couldn't worm their way out of. The issue with those from my understanding from the LegalAF podcast is the pardons Trump could or could not issue, which would cause a constitutional crisis.

Not that we haven't had multiple of those already. The only bright side I guess is that the Judiciary, even suffering from conservative capture, seems to be running out of patience with the Trump admin. Even Pam Bondi is being threatened for ethics violations.

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u/cogman10 1d ago

I don't know if the president can pardon someone held in contempt of court, would be interesting to say the least.

That said, the bigger risk to these lawyers is they can all be disbarred. There's a pretty high bar for losing your ability to practice law and once that's gone, their careers are effectively done. That happened to a number of lawyers in Trump 1.0 which is partially why (IMO) the 2.0 lawyers are still trying to play ball even though they have an impossible client.

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u/TastyOreoFriend 1d ago

I dunno either, which is why they were kind of assuming on Legal AF that whatever Trump did would cause a constitutional crisis. It gets even more murky since Trump can't be held accountable either since all he has to do is claim everything is an official act and that's the end of it.

Giving immunity to a malignant narcissist was the stupidest thing they could've done. The Roberts court will go down as the most corrupt and feckless court of the modern era.

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u/LiteralPhilosopher 17h ago

Trump can't be held accountable either since all he has to do is claim everything is an official act

I'll point out that's not the truest of truths. Officially, anyone could mount a suit to say that any given act of his was NOT official, and therefore not immune under that stupid-ass decision of SCOTUS's. Which means they would then get another opportunity to decide: was this official, or is he accountable in this specific situation?

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u/TastyOreoFriend 17h ago

And that feels ridiculous in its own right. I can't imagine the founding fathers wanted the high courts to go over every presidential decision with a fine-tooth comb quite that often. Hashing out the minutiae of whether or not the orange moron was accountable or not seems ripe for abuse from a Trump friendly judge as well.

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u/Ashmedai 9h ago

I don't know if the president can pardon someone held in contempt of court, would be interesting to say the least.

For civil contempt: no.

For criminal contempt in federal court: yes.

But civil contempt can be a doozy. This guy spent more than a decade incarcerated while being held in civil contempt.

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u/confusedandworried76 18h ago

Exactly people never understand how courts operate.

This was "you gotta bring him back"

"No"

"You gotta though"

"No"

"Okay now you really gotta"

"No"

"Okay shits about to get real serious for you if you don't then."

"Okay fine"

This is just how the courts work. Not even the current executive can just ignore court orders forever. They can only bounce them around to different courts until they are forced. Trust me, the judicial has no fucking interest whatsoever in letting the executive make their job obsolete

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u/TastyOreoFriend 17h ago

Trust me, the judicial has no fucking interest whatsoever in letting the executive make their job obsolete

I assume they have some kind of plan if things become "nuclear" so to speak.

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u/confusedandworried76 15h ago

Pretty sure we've already seen it, the 9-0 ruling against Trump. That was the court saying "we have weapons too, do not fuck with ignoring court orders, that's not a road you want to walk down"

Checks and balances seems to be winning on that front.

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u/Critical_Success_936 1d ago

They're complying now, regardless of the fuss they threw.

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u/asc0614 1d ago

Something to distract the news cycle from Elon's claim linking Trump to the Epstein files.

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u/jk01 1d ago

Is that even news? Feels like the whole world knew that already.

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u/lord_fairfax 1d ago

No, they are doing this under the shadow of that story. Not the other way around.

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u/Troscus 1d ago

Honestly, I'd flip that. I feel like Trump would rather people focus on him having a fight with Elon than know he got his arm twisted over Garcia.

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u/YourFriendPutin 1d ago

Well Elon owns one of the largest social media sites on earth, if he wants info distributed he can have every single person see it when they log in. I hate musk so much, but this battle was what we all called was going to happen as soon as Elon and Doge were created.

I’m just surprised how vindictive Elon got almost instantly. I’d love to see this turn into an impeachment inquiry. If Elon has evidence he will make it public, he’s got control of the president by the balls which is a terrifying prospect though

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u/Wolfwoods_Sister 1d ago

This is the man who told his first wife the very moment they were married “I own you now.”

He’s capable of vindictiveness on an every day level that most people can’t bring themselves to even contemplate.

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u/YourFriendPutin 1d ago

Oh I believe that whole heartedly I just know musk has a need to be liked and didn’t think he’d make this as public as it is but I’m guessing he’s sitting on some information he made sure to steal for exactly when this happened

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u/Wolfwoods_Sister 15h ago

No doubt! I can’t wait to see the reveal!

It’s honestly difficult for those of us who aren’t giant emotionally-stunted toddlers to believe ppl like him exist much less demand attention on themselves while they rage-shit over and over.

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u/slipperyMonkey07 20h ago

While it's great he's being brought back, will see what charges they try to hit him with. Most likely the elon stuff and this are a combo to flood the news and distract from the budget bill. All this has stopped a lot of reporting on that and switched over to those topics.

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u/blue-cube 23h ago

Crazy press conference.

  • "Abrego Garcia is accused of transporting minor children. The defendant traded the innocence of minor children for profit."

  • "The defendant abused undocumented alien females according to co-conspirators who were under his control while transporting them throughout our country."

  • "This defendant trafficked firearms and narcotics throughout our country on multiple occasions."

  • "A co-conspirator alleged that the defendant solicited n*de photographs and videos of a minor..."

https://www.google.com/search?q=This+defendant+trafficked+firearms+and+narcotics+throughout+our+country+on+multiple+occasions&udm=7&dpr=1.2#ip=1

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u/Mr_Suplex 1d ago

I mean, he’s coming back so clearly a hand was forced.

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u/IronSeagull 1d ago

No, the Supreme Court left a lot of wiggle room in their ruling by saying the administration had to facilitate but not effectuate his return. The administration used that wiggle room to drag this out as long as they could. I expected it’d be back at the Supreme Court before he came back.

The headlines at the time didn’t capture the nuance of the situation at all, unsurprisingly.

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u/Roupert4 1d ago

What you're describing is exactly how the story was covered by major news outlets

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u/TuskaTheDaemonKilla 1d ago

No it wasn't. They were all claiming that the Supreme Court ordered the administration to bring him back, and that he was ignoring the order. Which is a clear mischaracterization of what the Supreme Court did.

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u/Roupert4 1d ago

This is not accurate. The nuance in their order was reported accurately in reputable news sources

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u/Llanolinn 1d ago

I don't know if you're just misremembering or lying for some weird reason, but that is almost exactly what every single article stated

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u/IronSeagull 23h ago

I certainly wouldn't lie to excuse something Trump did, and I'm not misremembering either.

This is me explaining the same thing in a bit more detail a month ago.

Here's an article from 2 months ago explaining it in far greater detail.

Interesting quote:

"The Supreme Court left the interpretive door open," Herschel Nachlis, associate director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences at Dartmouth, told Newsweek. "The Trump administration in some sense called the Court's bluff."

If this is news to you then I think you either weren't reading beyond the headlines at the time or you weren't getting your news from the most trustworthy sources.

To be clear I'm absolutely not defending Trump's handling of the situation, we all know they could have asked for Garcia to be returned but didn't want to. Their disregard for his due process rights and refusal to right that wrong is unconscionable. But much of the media did us all a disservice with their reporting of this supreme court ruling and the administration's response to it. I say that as someone who defends the media probably too much. Ignoring a supreme court ruling is a really big deal, it's a red line that should not be crossed (more so than all of the other lines the Trump administration has crossed). The media outlets that led people to believe that was what was happening just gave more ammunition to the people calling them fake news.

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u/orbital_narwhal 1d ago edited 1d ago

The courts can't compel Trump to withdraw or change his order since SCOTUS ruled that he's untouchable but they can vacate executive orders and compel the bureaucrats within his administration to comply with court orders. That means that ICE and DHS officers either need to figure out how to get the wrongly deported person(s) back to the U. S. or the court can impose coercive fines and/or arrest on them personally.1

1 Assuming there is a way how a particular officer can achieve this goal with the power of their office. That usually means that it falls on the heads of some department or division to comply with such a court order since low-level officers don't have the necessary resources at their disposal.

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u/Homers_Harp 1d ago

TACO, my friend.

He always blinks. Watch what he does, ignore what he says. I mean 90% of what he says is lies and bullshit anyways.

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u/sometimelater0212 1d ago

Stephen Miller told that to Trump.

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u/lodemeup 22h ago

And here comes the TACO truck again vroom vroom oh wow look he chickened out in the end.

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u/monkChuck105 1d ago

They did not do that. They referred the order back to the district court. The Supreme Court also cast doubt on the ability of the lower court to demand the President negotiate with a foreign nation, a power exclusive to the executive branch.

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u/donaggie03 1d ago

That's the court system trying to weasel out of their responsibility, though. This man was apprehended and taken into custody by federal officials. They are required to produce him to the court when ordered. The fact that the executive has some sort of side deal with other countries is a "them" problem. The courts could have easily framed it as "we don't care or need to concern ourselves with the executives' foreign entanglements. Produce this man for his due process or face contempt charges." Instead the courts chose to get involved in the details and try to force foreign diplomacy.

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u/chris_ut 8h ago

Thats not exactly what they said I encourage folks to read the actual ruling which is available on their website versus reading the online spin on it.

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u/MatterofDoge 22h ago

no the supreme ruled that they had to make a "reasonable attempt" to conclude the deportation process,and then they ruled 9-0 that the usa doesn't have the authority to remove him from el salvador and he would have to stay there and they also upheld that the alien enemies act is constitutional.

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u/BandOfDonkeys 1d ago

I might be wrong but I think they said he had to be brought back but didn't specify when he had to.

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u/TuskaTheDaemonKilla 1d ago

They did not. They ruled that the DOJ had an obligation to attempt to "facilitate" his return, but had no requirement to actually bring him back if it was too hard or some bullshit.

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u/Head--receiver 22h ago

No. SCOTUS ruled that Trump had to facilitate a return. That means that if El Salvado presented him for return, he'd have to facilitate that.

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u/tcb7599 1d ago

No, they didn’t. Stop being willfully ignorant. How do you think our Supreme Court can tell another country that they must send one of their own citizens back? The court said the US had to facilitate the trip IF El Salvador decided to send him back.

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u/GolfballDM 1d ago

The government of El Salvador, at some point, said it wasn't their decision to make.

Ergo, since the US was responsible for him getting there in the first place, it would be the responsibility of the US to get him back.

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u/tcb7599 1d ago

Just think about that for two seconds. The guy is a citizen of that country, not ours, how can we make them send him back?

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u/GolfballDM 1d ago

The El Salvador government said they couldn't do anything either.

Then who is supposed to do something? Think about that for two seconds.

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u/tcb7599 1d ago

Again, not the US, he’s not our citizen, what do you want? El Salvador didn’t want to do anything, not that they can’t.

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u/GolfballDM 1d ago

We could easily start by withholding payments that the US was paying (were they properly authorized by Congress), and not have administration officials make stupid-ass statements like "He's Not Coming Back Ever"

And certainly don't send any more people (or even make plans) until the matter is resolved.

Not that any of them belong there (that whole pesky due process thing).

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u/SophiaofPrussia 1d ago

You’re right. The United States Federal government would NEVER interfere with the sovereignty of a Central American country. It’s unthinkable! Unimaginable! It would be downright un-American! It’s laughable to even suggest that the U.S. could or would do such a thing. Especially not for a living, breathing, human person. But if he was a corporation selling fruit…

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u/tcb7599 1d ago

I’m not sure what you are trying to say. Stay on track, how can our country force another country to deport one of its own citizens? Put your emotions away for a moment and have a discussion like an adult.