Rachel Maddow brought on Kilmar Abrego-García’s lawyer and painted García as an innocent victim — ignoring the spousal abuse court filings, law enforcement records stating he ran a smuggling operation that transported MS-13 members and associates across state lines and hid children on vehicle floorboards, and a federal smuggling indictment laying out the smuggling ring in detail.
On her show, Maddow said:
“This is a man’s life and this is what used to be our constitutional republic. Both of which are being somewhat shredded by the Trump administration for something that even on their own terms has just been failure after failure after failure. They effectively lost on this again in court today, but in the process still managed to tear apart this man’s life even more. Joining us now is the lawyer for Mr. Abrego Garcia. I really appreciate Mr. Moshenberg you being here. Thank you so much for being here tonight.
Um, first of all, I, I just have to ask how Mr. Abrego and his family are doing tonight. Given the roller coaster that they’ve been on, not just over these months but specifically today.”
She continued:
“I understand that the government seems to have tried to threaten Mr. Abrego García into pleading guilty, whereupon they offered to send him to a different third country and only threatened to send him to Uganda, essentially as punishment for not agreeing to plead guilty.”
There’s no evidence the government threatened him or designated Uganda as “punishment”; records show it was floated as a third-country option after he declined a plea tied to Costa Rica. Uganda appeared on the list because the U.S. maintains agreements with certain countries willing to accept third-country nationals in removal cases — it was not a special penalty aimed at him personally, but one of the fallback destinations available to ICE once other options failed.
Maddow continued in her Abrego-Garcia Press Release fake news interview:
“Mr. Abrego García has become essentially a household name in this country. People know his name, they know what he looks like, they know at least something about his story because of the administration’s actions, but also because of the administration’s repeated mistakes. Just the Kafkaesque nightmare that this has become.”
When Maddow described it as a “Kafkaesque nightmare,” she was explicitly blaming the Trump administration — saying it had created a cruel, confusing, and unjust tangle of deportation orders, plea deals, and country transfers. In her framing, Abrego García wasn’t a man facing serious allegations — he was an innocent victim and father whose life was being “shredded” by Trump’s policies.
But beneath the sentiment lies a record rife with serious concerns. His wife, Jennifer Vásquez Sura, filed two civil protective orders against him—one in 2020 and another in 2021—accusing him of physical and verbal abuse, allegations judges described as “serious and concerning.” In the 2020 petition, she said he slapped and kicked her, broke her phones, and threatened her safety. In the 2021 filing, she alleged that he “punched and scratched her eye,” ripped her clothes off, grabbed her arm, and left bruises—leading her to say, “at this point I am afraid to be close to him.” Those statements came directly from her sworn court filings.
Adding another alarming layer, her ex-partner, Edwin Trejo Ramos, filed a 2018 custody motion accusing her of “dating a gang member” and raising concerns about their children’s safety.
Federal prosecutors accuse Abrego García of running a multi-year human smuggling operation. The 2025 indictment details how he transported undocumented people across state lines, including children placed on vehicle floorboards. Prosecutors further allege that multiple smuggling trips involved known MS-13 members or associates, linking him directly to the gang through his operation.
Because of all this, both criminal prosecutors and immigration authorities were pursuing him — DOJ pressing smuggling charges in Tennessee, and ICE seeking to deport him because he was in the United States illegally and already under a final removal order. He had first been granted protection from deportation in 2019, but that protection was later stripped after years of litigation. By March 15, 2025, under the Trump administration, ICE executed the removal order and deported him to El Salvador — a deportation that federal courts later ruled unlawful.
His case soon moved on three tracks colliding at once: immigration enforcement by ICE, criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice, and judicial intervention by the courts. After lawsuits filed by his wife and Democratic-aligned groups, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland ordered the government to “facilitate and effectuate” his return after deportation to El Salvador. The U.S. government resisted, but the Supreme Court later let her order stand, effectively affirming that the government had to bring him back. He was returned to the U.S. in government custody in June and appeared in federal court in Tennessee, where he pleaded not guilty to the smuggling charges and was released pending trial. ICE quickly re-arrested him during a supervised check-in, and the options on the table became clear: he had been deported once to El Salvador, Costa Rica had been offered in plea negotiations, and then came Uganda.
This is a perfect example of why the United States should not allow illegal entry in the first place — and why anyone who sneaks in should be removed promptly to their home country before becoming tangled in years of criminal cases, lawsuits, courtroom battles — and media spin that turns illegal aliens into victims.