Better late than never? When Tennessee state police pulled over Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a car owned by a convicted human trafficker, carrying eight people without identification, the FBI and ICE couldn’t be bothered to even ask the troopers to detain the group. The police knew Abrego Garcia was trafficking the group from Missouri to Maryland, but couldn’t do anything about it.
Of course, that took place under previous White House management. This administration’s Department of Justice is far more interested ibn Abrego Garcia’s midnight rides, ABC News reports this morning. Ibn fact, they have taken enough of an interest to chat up the owner of the car Abrego Garcia was driving that night, and they know right where to find him too:
The U.S. Department of Justice has been quietly investigating a Tennessee traffic stop in 2022 involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man at the center of a high-profile court battle over his mistaken deportation from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, ABC News has learned. …
The inmate, Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, 38, was the registered owner of a vehicle driven by Abrego Garcia when he was stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol in late 2022, according to the sources. Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding in a vehicle with eight passengers and told police they’d been working construction in Missouri.
And guess what they found out?
Hernandez-Reyes told investigators that he previously operated a “taxi service” based in Baltimore. He claimed to have met Abrego Garcia around 2015 and claimed to have hired him on multiple occasions to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to various locations in the United States, the sources told ABC News. The frequency and time frame of the alleged trips was not immediately clear.
So much for being a “dad living quietly in Maryland.” If ABC’s sources are correct, then Hernandez-Reyes has confirmed that Abrego Garcia participated in the human trafficking for which Hernandez-Reyes got convicted, and why he’s currently in prison. That at least puts Abrego Garcia within the ranks of organized crime at some level, even apart from the evidence of his MS-13 affiliations.
That much is clear, but also clear is the determination of the Trump administration to fight tooth and nail to keep Abrego Garcia from returning to the US. That includes a media fight that the White House has had no problem escalating, and the Associated Press sounds almost impressed by the effort:
Responding to coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation, the Trump administration has called journalists “despicable,” questioned CNN’s patriotism, scolded Fox News and even admitted to a mistake — in admitting to a mistake in the first place.
The vigorous reaction was noteworthy even in service to a president known for never backing down and a hostility toward the press. “The song is the same,” said former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno, “but the volume is a lot louder.”
President Donald Trump has fought the press on several fronts since returning to office in January. His team is battling The Associated Press in court over White House access, has sought to close Voice of America and launched FCC investigations into ABC News, CBS News, PBS and NPR, among others.
In the Abrego Garcia case, the White House took a situation that may have knocked predecessors on their heels and used it as an opportunity.
It certainly is an opportunity. The media keeps demanding “due process” for Abrego Garcia, but he had his day in court. The only impediment to his return to El Salvador was a court injunction based on a likely fraudulent claim about being targeted by a gang that is apparently no longer an issue anyway. That technical point, while valid, hardly outweighs the public’s desire to deport criminal illegal aliens, which is one of the most 80/20 of all 80/20 issues in public life at the moment:
Not only did Abrego Garcia get accused of domestic violence on multiple occasions, he also participated in criminal conspiracies to commit human trafficking, as well as made his MS-13 affiliation clear through his tats and other activities.Law enforcement suspected those connections for years. And on top of all of that, Abrego Garcia had no legal right to remain in the country.
If Democrats and the Protection Racket Media want to adopt Abrego Garcia as their poster child for Democrat governance, why wouldn’t Trump seize that as an opportunity? His continued presence in the US and the failure of the FBI and ICE to even take any interest in his human trafficking activity under Democrat control speaks volumes about the fecklessness of progressive policies and personnel. Trump probably can’t believe his good fortune on this issue, and he will play it for all it’s worth.
