Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal immigrant, alleged MS-13 gang member, and suspected human smuggler, is living freely in Maryland, posting TikTok videos for the world to see. At the same time, federal authorities sit muzzled under a judicial gag order.
The Salvadoran national, released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in early December, created a new TikTok account and has posted at least two Spanish-language videos showing him lip-syncing to songs in what appears to be a suburban neighborhood. One video features him singing along to a track by Danny Berrios, an American singer known for Spanish Christian music, and has garnered nearly half a million views.
MS-13 terrorist Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released by a rogue judge and is now making TikToks.
pic.twitter.com/MlJwkRAmLH— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 27, 2025
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, appointed to the Tennessee federal bench by President Barack Obama, issued a gag order in October, ordering federal prosecutors to warn Department of Justice and DHS employees against making any statements he deemed prejudicial about Abrego Garcia.
The order restricted federal officials from publicly using terms such as “gangbanger,” “serial wife beater,” or “human trafficker” to describe him while the case proceeds. Crenshaw recently canceled the criminal trial and scheduled a hearing for January 28, 2026 to determine whether the prosecution for human smuggling was vindictive.
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS Assistant Secretary, expressed frustration on X on Saturday over the absurdity of the situation.
“So we, at [the Department of Homeland Security] are under gag order by an activist judge and Kilmar Abrego Garcia is making TikToks,” McLaughlin said.
“American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement and give megaphones to those who oppose our legal system,” she added.
So we, at @DHSgov, are under gag order by an activist judge and Kilmar Abrego Garcia is making TikToks.
American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement and give megaphones to those who oppose our legal system. https://t.co/11pNrHQUK6
— Tricia McLaughlin (@TriciaOhio) December 27, 2025
On December 11, 2025, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis, another Obama appointee, ordered the immediate release of Abrego Garcia from ICE custody. Xinis cited the absence of a final removal order against him and stated that his removal could not be regarded as reasonably foreseeable, imminent, or in accordance with due process. “Since Abrego Garcia’s improper [deportation] to El Salvador, he has been detained, again without lawful authority,” Xinis wrote. She subsequently extended her temporary restraining order, which keeps Abrego Garcia out of federal custody through the Christmas holiday period.
In 2019, police in Maryland identified Abrego Garcia in official documents as affiliated with MS-13, one of the most violent street gangs in the world. Abrego Garcia was arrested in March 2019 at a Home Depot parking lot in Hyattsville, Maryland, where officers deemed him a member of MS-13 based on his clothing and other factors, including tattoos linking him to the gang.
This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such “a fine and innocent person.” They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found… pic.twitter.com/31sNr2k1SK
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2025
Court records also show that Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez, filed temporary protective orders against him in August 2020 and May 2021. In the 2020 order, she said he verbally abused, kicked, slapped, and shoved her, took her phone, and locked her out of the house with her three kids inside. In the 2021 petition, she alleged he punched and scratched her, leaving her bleeding, and ripped off her shirt.
In 2022, during a Tennessee traffic stop, police caught Abrego Garcia driving a vehicle with eight passengers. Officers observed that none of the passengers had any luggage and that each gave Abrego Garcia’s address as their own, and the car he was driving belonged to a known smuggler.
Earlier this year, federal prosecutors indicted Abrego Garcia on smuggling-related counts. The grand jury indictment alleges that while illegally in the U.S., Abrego Garcia made more than 100 trips across the country smuggling illegal migrants, and that he participated in a years-long human smuggling operation from 2016 to 2025.
The indictment alleges that from about 2016 to 2025, Abrego Garcia and others conspired to bring migrants illegally to the United States from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and elsewhere, through Mexico and across the Texas-Mexico border.
Abrego Garcia and a co-conspirator “ordinarily picked up the undocumented aliens in Houston, Texas area” after they had crossed the border. The pair then allegedly would transport “the undocumented aliens from Texas to other parts of the United States to further the aliens’ unlawful presence in the United States,” the indictment said.
In the indictment, the government said Abrego Garcia and six other uncharged and unnamed co-conspirators communicated using cellphones and social media to unlawfully transport the undocumented immigrants.
They allege that Abrego Garcia would hold the cellphones of those he was transporting within the U.S. and would return them at the end of their trip, “they did this to ensure the undocumented aliens could not and would not contact anyone else during the trip,” the government said in the indictment.
Abrego Garcia has been locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration since his March 2025 deportation to El Salvador and subsequent return to the United States. Since his return in June, the government has pushed to deport him to various African countries, including Liberia, Uganda, Eswatini, and Ghana. His attorneys say he would accept deportation to Costa Rica, which has already guaranteed he could live there freely, but the government has made no apparent effort to pursue that option. Prosecutors continue to seek his permanent removal despite his release from ICE custody.
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