Image Credit: Andrew Harnik / Staff / Getty Images 
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal alien at the center of a long-running deportation dispute, is posting videos of himself on TikTok, while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Trump administration remain gagged by an “activist judge.”
On Saturday, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin took to social media to voice her outrage at the situation.
“So we, at [DHS], are under gag order by an activist judge and Kilmar Abrego Garcia is making TikToks,” McLaughlin wrote.
“American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement and give megaphones to those who oppose our legal system.”
A court order by an Obama-appointed federal judge restricts the DHS and Trump administration from publicly discussing the case.
Garcia and his lawyers had repeatedly argued that public criticism from Trump officials was endangering his right to a fair trial. Garcia is scheduled to face trial in January 2026.
Garcia became a cause célèbre for the left when he was arrested back in March and swiftly deported to El Salvador. He was visited in the country by American politicians, and then returned to the US to face human-trafficking charges at the order of a judge.
Prosecutors claim Garcia made hundreds of trips from the US-Mexico border to deliver illegal aliens across the US.
Garcia is said to have worked “full time” as a people-smuggler, earning as much as $1500 per trip.
Two witnesses testified that smugglers would charge migrants from Central and South America as much as $8,000 for passage into the US. Once in the US, Garcia would transport them across the US to their destinations.
Democrats and leftist radicals claim Garcia’s arrest was a case of mistaken identity and that he was a law-abiding family man, despite copious evidence to the contrary, including gang tattoos on his hands. He was repeatedly and misleadingly described as “Maryland Man” in the mainstream media.
Garcia entered the US unlawfully in 2012 and was identified as a member of MS-13 when he was arrested by law enforcement in 2019. He was suspected of being involved in human trafficking.
In that same year, an immigration court determined that “the determination that the Respondent [Abrego Garcia] is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record, namely, information contained in the Gang Field Interview Sheet.”
However, Garcia was granted a deportation withholding order because it was feared his life would be in danger if he were deported back to El Salvador.
The current charges against Garcia stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee.
Garcia was pulled over in a car with nine passengers. The vehicle Garcia was driving was owned by a convicted migrant smuggler, and six of the nine occupants were in the US illegally. Garcia had an envelope on his person containing $1400 in cash.
President Trump told NBC he thought it would be “a very easy case” against Garcia, who had a “horrible record of abuse” of women.
