The Administration’s Ghastly Game Plan For Savaging Abrego Garcia

INSIDE: Jim Comey ... Jack Smith ... Paul Manafort

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 15: U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House on October 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel provided an update on the Trump administration’s progress in reducing violent crime. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The Savagery Is the Point

It’s difficult to convey the full scope of the Trump administration’s misdeeds in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but let’s give it a shot.

You know the broad contours of the story already. The administration illegally removed Abrego Garcia from his home in Maryland to El Salvador, where he was thrown in prison for months. Despite the Supreme Court ordering that the administration facilitate his return, the executive branch dragged its feet for weeks. When the administration did finally return him to the United States (without notice to his lawyers or the judge in the case), it did so only to lock him up again on criminal charges that had been secretly filed in Tennessee.

It’s what’s happened since then that has become more difficult to convey because it’s not been clear what exactly the administration’s end game is here. You might have thought the endgame was the criminal case in Tennessee: Win a conviction then deport him either before or after he served his sentence here. Nope, as it turned out.

It’s become apparent now that the administration is not driven by a desire for any particular outcome, but for whatever outcome among the available choices inflicts maximum pain and suffering on Abrego Garcia.

If that sounds overstated, let me quickly walk you through the administration’s threat to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country because it’s the best example of the bobbing and weaving that’s marked the administration’s ungrounded approach to the case.

At first glance, you might think that the third country removal is the story now. Hasn’t the man suffered enough without being sent to a country on the African continent with which he has no ties, where it’s unclear if he’ll again be incarcerated without being charged, and where the assurances are shaky at best that he won’t simply be forward on to El Salvador? You might be inclined to follow the ins and outs of that story, with the ultimate question being whether the administration succeeds in shipping him off to Africa. But as it turned out you’d have been wrong.

Once the Trump administration had Abrego Garcia in custody again in Maryland in his immigration case (after he’d been ordered released from custody in Tennessee while his trial was pending), it made little effort to find a third country willing to accept him. His lawyers suspected that the administration was content to just hold him indefinitely and so forced the issue by moving to secure a court order to release him. In a hearing earlier this month before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland, she sussed out that almost nothing had been done by the administration to find a third country and what had been done had been undertaken immediately before the hearing in anticipation of having to answer for its conduct.

So now your inclination might be to track whether Abrego Garcia wins by securing his release rather than being subject to indefinite detention by a foot-dragging Trump administration. Wrong again!

Facing the prospect of a potentially adverse ruling from Xinis, the administration declared on Friday that it had found a third country for Abrego Garcia. Liberia, take a bow. Xinis summoned the parties for another hearing yesterday, where the administration said it’s preparing to remove him to Liberia by as soon as Oct. 31. I should mention here that Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have told Xinis he is willing to accept removal to Costa Rica. To Xinis’ puzzlement, the administration has not accepted that option.

The administration’s shifting priorities reflect not some grand plan or strategy, but at each juncture choosing the option before it that most torments Abrego Garcia. It’s really the only explanation that accounts for the meandering series of positions by the administration. But there’s one other wild card in the mix.

Abrego Garcia still faces criminal trial in Tennessee on the human smuggling charges the administration whipped up. So far, he’s convinced a judge — not that hard on the facts I’ve already laid out here — that he’s established a prima facie case of vindictive prosecution by the Trump DOJ. That shifts the burden to the administration to establish that it undertook the prosecution on a legitimate basis. Importantly, it also opened the door for Abrego Garcia to conduct discovery on how the administration handled his case.

The administration is fighting like hell to head off that discovery, which includes a subpoena of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and other high-ranking DOJ officials. The judge in the criminal case has set two days of hearings on Nov. 4-5 for all the pretrial motions, including the vindictive prosecution claim. Witness testimony is expected. The Trump DOJ moved yesterday to quash the subpoena in the hopes of preventing testimony from Blanche and others. Meanwhile, the judge in the criminal case smacked the administration yesterday for its “exaggerated if not simply inaccurate” out-of-court statements about Abrego Garcia

So you can see now the added advantage to the administration of resuming the third country removal plan, whether it’s Liberia or somewhere else (it’s likely the Abrego Garcia will formally express in a hearing today a fear of being sent to Liberia which will trigger additional delays). They’ll be happy to avoid further scrutiny of their conduct in the criminal case even it means effectively dropping the case by deporting him.

The criminal case, third country removal, and prolonged detention are all just tools the Trump administration is using to savage Abrego Garcia. The savagery is the point.

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