NASHVILLE — The Justice Department argued Friday that releasing suspected gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia would pose a danger to the public because of his alleged history of violence toward his wife, sexual misconduct toward young girls, and participation in an illegal alien smuggling ring.

Abrego Garica, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who has been incorrectly dubbed a “Maryland man” by the legacy media, appeared in federal court in Nashville on Friday for his arraignment on human smuggling charges and a detention hearing. Wearing a bright red prison suit and listening to proceedings through interpreters, Abrego Garcia pled not guilty in front of a crowd of left-wing supporters who showed up to watch the case play out.

Abrego Garcia faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and up to 10 years in prison for each illegal smuggled across the country if found guilty on another count of unlawful transportation of illegal aliens. He was returned to the United States last week after being deported to El Salvador due to suspected ties to MS-13.

After his not guilty plea, Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes heard arguments from the Justice Department and Abrego Garcia’s lawyers on whether or not to release him as his case is litigated. As court ended for the day, she said that she would not give a date for her decision, but that it would be “sooner rather than later.”

Acting United States Attorney for Middle Tennessee Robert McGuire argued that Abrego Garcia should be detained because he was a flight risk and would endanger the community based on testimony and evidence that he had endangered children through his alleged participation in a smuggling ring, ties to violent gangs, and the multiple complaints from his wife about domestic violence.

I’m at the federal courthouse in Nashville reporting for @realDailyWire on the arraignment of suspected MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Dozens of protesters are outside the building, holding signs like “fuck ICE” and other pro-illegal alien messages. pic.twitter.com/JAxpn3798j

— Leif Le Mahieu (@leif_lemahieu) June 13, 2025

The crux of the Justice Department’s case relies on a traffic stop in Putnam County, Tennessee, on November 30, 2022, when Abrego Garcia was pulled over driving a Chevrolet suburban with nine others inside. One of those individuals noted his age to be 15 when Tennessee Highway Patrol had each person write their name and age down on a sheet of paper.

Homeland Security special agent Peter Joseph said that the 15-year-old boy was unaccounted for to this day and that they hadn’t tracked him down yet, saying that “we don’t know right now” if he is OK. Joseph added that at least six of the nine individuals being transported have been identified as illegal aliens from a variety of countries including Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras.

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Joseph also testified that Abrego Garcia lied to the Tennessee state troopers when he claimed that he was bringing a construction crew from St. Louis to Maryland. According to data gathered through license plate readers, Joseph said that the vehicle hadn’t been in St. Louis in the timeframe Abrego Garcia claimed and that there were no construction tools in the vehicle.

Abrego Garcia also had a history of sexual misconduct toward minors, multiple of his associates told Joseph. Additionally, Joseph said an unidentified girl provided evidence to federal investigators that Abrego Garcia had asked a 15-year-old Maryland girl to send him nude pictures of herself and sent her other messages discussing OnlyFans.

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia referred to these accusations as “slanderous” and said a “flirtatious event” from five years ago shouldn’t impact his detention.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, including public defenders Richard Tennant and Dumaka Shabazz, argued that the Justice Department’s case relied too much on hearsay, and they tried to discredit the testimony about his activities given to federal investigators from two men who also face deportation and federal punishment.

The defense did not call any witnesses, but pointed to multiple pieces of evidence, including a 2019 immigration holding that Abrego Garcia should not be deported to his home country of El Salvador because of fears of gang violence. They also included a letter from an immigrant activist group called CASA, which promised to help Abrego Garcia should he be released.

Holmes at times appeared critical of the Justice Department, and suggested that their evidence was dated because it came from 2020-2022. When discussing the orders of protection granted to Abrego Garcia’s wife over fears for her own safety, Holmes asked McGuire whether it would be “equally plausible” that he had a change of heart over the last four years rather than stay the same.

Regardless of her decision, Abrego Garcia will likely not be leaving federal custody anytime soon as ICE is expected to take custody of him if he is released on the smuggling charges.

Before the hearing began, dozens of people gathered outside the courthouse holding signs like “F*** ICE” and “Stop ICE Kidnappings.” By noon, the crowd had largely dispersed as rain ripped through Nashville and the proceedings dragged into late afternoon.

You know, sometimes, in the hurly burly argle bargle mumbo jumbo of divisive political discourse, it becomes too easy for us to stop listening to the arguments of our opponents. Remember: we all want to see America thrive, and THEY all want to see America particlized in a self-aggrandizing orgy of violent destruction, then set on fire to destroy even the remaining traces of the personal liberty and prosperity we once spread not only from sea to shining sea but all around the world, so they can sweep away our flawed but magnificent nation and replace it with a socialist paradise that will quickly devolve into the hell of oppression and terror that has been the fate of every other socialist paradise while their misbegotten, ignorant and self-deceiving idealism slowly reveals itself to be nothing more than a ravenous hunger for power with its attendant sadistic cruelties.

But for a moment, let’s put those minor differences between us aside and see if we can try to understand our friends on the Left so we can begin to appreciate the goals and ideas that have turned them into such flaming dirt-bags.

For instance, take the riots in Los Angeles. They began when some Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tried to arrest a number of illegal migrants for the purposes of deportation. Now sure, you could say the migrants had broken federal laws and the ICE agents are duly appointed federal law enforcement officers, working to roll back the slow-motion invasion of our country by unvetted illegals that took place during an administration run by sinister and faceless leftist operatives hiding behind the mindless shell of a once-sentient machine politician who had been propped up for half a century by an unimaginably corrupt corporate news media.

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But let’s look at the other side of the argument. We can’t just go around randomly sending child molesters and drug dealers back to their native countries. These are jobs Americans won’t do because they’re largely civilized people. And who will mow our lawns in order to weasel their way into our confidence and get closer to our children? You don’t want an untidy lawn, do you? And when you think of it in that larger context, you can see why masked thugs are pelting federal officers with rocks and torching cars and looting businesses while waving foreign flags to signal the fact they want to destroy the last best hope of civilization and replace it with whatever gangster-ocracy they just escaped from.

Now some of you might ask: who in the world would believe a crazy-ass argument like that?  But let me ask you something: Did you know that 56% of young liberal white women have been treated for mental illness. Think about that the next time one of these ladies posts her support for the rioters. See, when you first hear that most liberal white girls are mentally ill, you probably think the mental illness is just something a little neurotic like when they won’t let you pay for dinner but then sleep with you anyway. But no, it turns out that talking to some of these dames is more like being trapped in Arkham Asylum desperately trying to escape from a shrieking Admiral Levine who’s coming after you with one of those emasculators they use to castrate bulls, and then just as you lock yourself in an abandoned broom closet and think you’ve escaped him or her or whatever the hell he is, you turn around and there’s some 21-year-old from UCLA screaming “globalize the intifada” and voting for Gavin Newsom, and just as you think you’re done for, you wake up in your own bed and whisper, “Oh thank God, it was only a dream,” and then roll over and, holy crap, she’s lying right next to you. And you didn’t even pay for dinner. And also Los Angeles is on fire.

So now that we understand that these riots have the full and enthusiastic support of young leftist white women shrieking at us unintelligibly from whatever enclave of privilege has made it possible for them to believe the nutty crap they believe, I think we can begin to have more civilized and serious conversations about providing air support to the National Guard.

* * *

This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “The Andrew Klavan Show.”

The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan

Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fourth installment, “A Woman Underground.” His most recent nonfiction release is “The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness.” (May 2025, Zondervan/HarperCollins).