NASHVILLE—In a rehashing of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s last hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr., has left the defendant in jail while the jurist “takes the case under advisement.”
The reason for the July 16 court session was to hear an appeal filed by Trump’s Department of Justice against the ruling of Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ordering the release of the embattled Abrego Garcia. This was the third hearing in recent weeks.
Abrego Garcia, who is a Salvadoran native, was illegally deported from the U.S. in March to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT torture prison, despite a court order from 2019 that had barred his deportation. The Trump administration continues to claim Abrego Garcia was a member of the criminal MS-13 gang, which the defendant denies.
Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. on the order of the Supreme Court and brought to Nashville in June to be tried on charges of human smuggling stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. The prosecutors had secretly secured a grand jury indictment. Abrego Garcia has pled not guilty to the charges.
Essentially, the same testimony given last time was again delivered by Homeland Security Investigations Agent Peter Joseph on July 16. Joseph based his arguments against release on the same hearsay evidence previously used, with no objection to its admissibility by defense attorney Sean Hecker.
In June, Judge Holmes ruled that Abrego Garcia was not a flight risk or a danger to the community and set certain conditions for his release, including ankle monitoring.
Holmes also agreed to a request by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys to temporarily keep him in custody until they received a commitment from the government that he would not be deported upon being released to await trial.
Prosecutor Robert McGuire appealed, arguing that Abrego Garcia posed a flight risk and a threat to public safety if released. Judge Crenshaw, after a two-hour-plus hearing, took the matter under “advisement,” with the caveat that the decision would not be rendered until the following week.
Confusion ensues from the government’s conflicting and contradictory positions in this case. The immediate issue is what would happen to Abrego Garcia should Judge Crenshaw order his pre-trial release. Government spokespersons said they may send him to a “third country,” including, possibly, South Sudan. The threat is purely punitive and meant to strike terror into legally vulnerable populations. Legal pundits theorize and question whether Abrego Garcia would be free, in detention, or even re-deported to El Salvador if he were to be sent to a “third country.”
Further confusion is caused by Maryland Judge Paula Xinis in this anomalous legal scenario. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed a motion in that judge’s federal court requesting that the defendant be returned to Maryland in light of their assertion that the original arrest in Maryland was without a warrant and was without any legal basis.
Judge Xinis assured Abrego Garcia’s attorneys that she would rule well in advance of the July 16 hearing in Tennessee. As of July 16, however, Judge Xinis had not issued any ruling, so the case continues with the aura of a twilight zone, the realm of the surreal.
By any calculation, this case makes in so many ways an unprecedented mockery of the so-called rule of law in the United States. This is a power play, a test of the strength of the Trump regime to do whatever it wants, a test by the criminal Trump to set a lawless precedent.
In light of the national and international attention garnered by this travesty of justice, legal experts, immigrants, and those who stand in solidarity with them all wait with bated breath for Judge Crenshaw’s decision, which cannot come too soon.
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