Extreme Commanders

Judge says Justice Department failed to make case for Abrego Garcia’s detention ahead of criminal trial

A judge in Tennessee said the Justice Department hasn’t made a convincing case that Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be kept in pretrial detention, though the mistakenly deported man who was returned to the US is likely to remain in federal immigration custody regardless.

Abrego Garcia is being held in Tennessee as he faces a federal indictment of smuggling undocumented immigrants across state lines in 2022. The US returned him from El Salvador this month after the indictment was unsealed, ending a political standoff over his due process rights.

His court proceedings have become a vessel for the Trump Justice Department’s hardball approach to immigration enforcement in which it has sought to portray Abrego Garcia as part of a gang operation in Maryland.

But as she ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor, Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes of the federal court in Nashville said Sunday that “the government failed to prove” so far that he endangered any minor victim, might try to flee from the law or might attempt to obstruct justice, as the Justice Department had argued. She noted that under federal criminal law, the Justice Department hadn’t even shown it had enough evidence to hold a hearing seeking his pretrial detention.

Still, Abrego Garcia is likely to remain in federal custody, because immigration authorities will be able to keep him detained separate from his criminal case. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Holmes’ opinion is still a notable one, building upon six hours of evidence and testimony regarding Abrego Garcia’s detention earlier this month, in what amounted to a preview of what may be evidence used at a trial.

Holmes’ 51-page ruling essentially deems some DOJ accusations about Abrego Garcia to be overblown — built upon evidence with questionable reliability from a traffic stop, cooperators in the case providing information to law enforcement through hearsay, and a shaky theory of victimizing children in a human-smuggling operation when that has not been charged or proved by the DOJ, the judge wrote.

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Kristi Noem's stupidity is an existential threat

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” — Benjamin Franklin

The Trump administration just refused to allow an Australian writer entry to America because he’d penned articles on his personal blog critical of the administration’s support for the Netanyahu government’s Gaza policies.
Whether you support or oppose those policies, this should shock every American.

George Orwell noted, in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four: “The Thought Police are always watching. The only safe way was to think nothing, to know nothing, to believe nothing.”

Are we there yet?

Throughout my lifetime, American politicians of both parties have been outspoken in defending the right of people to speak their minds, regardless of their positions.
Echoing the quote often misattributed to Voltaire — “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” — elected officials from Lincoln to Goldwater to Reagan have pointed to our First Amendment rights of free speech as a bedrock of the American ethos.

A strong nation that believes in its principles isn’t afraid of criticism. If anything, the embrace of dissent is the steel in the spine of our nation. As the First Amendment to our Constitution says: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”

Yet now we have officials who are examining the writings of people flying into the U.S. and using those writings — when critical of Trump or his friends — to harass travelers or even deny them entry into the country.

Alistair Kitchen is a 33-year-old Australian who spent six years in New York at Columbia University getting his Masters Degree. His Substack blog, “Kitchen Counter,” explicitly called out the university and both Republican and Democratic politicians for approving of Trump arresting students based on their speech.

That, apparently, was enough of a crime to keep him out of the U.S. when he tried to enter the country recently for a two-week visit to friends in New York.

https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigat ... 672385807/