The left and media’s favorite “Maryland man” is back in the headlines again as the Trump administration’s latest deportation efforts are underway.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) once again detained illegal immigrant and alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia following his release from a Tennessee jail last week where he was facing human smuggling charges.
But his deportation saga rages on as the left continues to prop him up as the poster boy for what they consider the Trump administration’s flawed crackdown on illegal immigration. On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Emily Jashinsky, host of MK Media’s After Party, to discuss the latest developments in Abrego Garcia’s case.
The Latest
Monday morning, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced ICE had arrested Abrego Garcia and said the “MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, wife beater, child predator, and criminal illegal alien” was being “processed for removal to Uganda.”
The plan to send the 30-year-old Salvadoran migrant to the African nation reportedly came after he refused a deal that would have seen him plead guilty to human smuggling charges and be deported to Costa Rica. Instead, he was released from federal prison in Tennessee on Friday pending trial after a judge granted his release.
Abrego Garcia was then ordered to report to ICE’s Baltimore office Monday morning, which is where he was arrested. He was once again granted a reprieve, however, after Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis pumped the brakes on the Trump administration’s plan to send him to Uganda. He will now be given a chance to contest the deportation order.
Who Is Kilmar Abrego Garcia?
Megyn likened Abrego Garcia to a bad penny. “Every time we’ve gotten rid of this illegal, he comes back,” she said. He made national headlines earlier this year after he was deported to his native El Salvador despite being granted a “withholding of removal” to the country back in 2019.
The media almost immediately decided Abrego Garcia was not an illegal immigrant with a checkered past but a “Maryland man” and “dad” who was wrongfully targeted. The message was clear, as the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters illustrated with this compilation:
The sympathetic framing ignored the fact that, during a bond hearing on April 29, 2019, an immigration judge ruled the evidence showed Abrego Garcia was a verified member of MS-13 – something the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed later that year.
But that didn’t stop Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) from making an attention-grabbing trip to the El Salvadoran prison where Abrego Garcia was being held. In June, the illegal migrant was quietly returned to the United States and slapped with charges related to the trafficking of migrants. The misdeed was seemingly caught on police body cam on at least one occasion during a 2022 traffic stop.
Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez, successfully petitioned the court for a protective order against him following domestic violence allegations in 2020 and 2021. Court documents show Vasquez accused him of punching, scratching, grabbing, and bruising her, among other injuries.
Ongoing Support
None of that seemed to concern the hundreds who gathered outside the ICE office in Baltimore Monday morning to watch Abrego Garcia surrender to authorities. “Much like they did with Mahmoud Khalil, the rabble-rouser on Columbia’s campus who they tried to deport, the left gave him the star treatment and rushed to embrace Him,” Megyn noted. “They really, really, really want this ‘Maryland dad’ to stay.”
The rally, at which Abrego Garcia spoke via a translator, included chants of “we are all Kilmar” and a “rapid response choir” singing about his plight to the tune of “This Little Light of Mine.” Some of their most inspired lyrics:
- “Across Maryland, I’m gonna let it shine.”
- “Kilmar is our neighbor, you can’t have him in trouble.”
- “Leave him be, leave him be, leave him be, leave him be.”
- “Let him free. Let him free. Let him free.”
Megyn and Jashinsky joked the chorus was sure to move the needle. “This will do the trick,” Megyn quipped. “Maybe Trump will see the choir and have second thoughts about the deportation. Or Kristi Noem, she could be moved by them.”
In Jashinsky’s view, the outcry for Abrego Garcia shows just how untethered the left has become. “They are finding meaning and purposes as these wannabe rebels when they have the entire corporate media on their side and really, really well-funded nonprofit organizations,” she noted. “The reason that we are in this mess in the first place… is that most people who crossed during the Biden administration were trafficked… Cartels [were] getting richer and richer, and then, on top of all of that, the United States system absolutely exploded because the Biden administration [was]… using the system to lure people here.”
“The system [got] completely screwed up, and then we’re expected to have crocodile tears in cases like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, when this is the most ludicrous case to treat as a martyr because he has all of these different serious allegations against him,” she continued. “There is no limiting principle. They will do these protests even when the most legitimate cases of deportation are on the table… It’s not about Abrego Garcia. It is about having any border security.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky by tuning in to episode 1,134 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.