Officials Prepared to Return Abrego Garcia—Until Trump Intervened

Some officials in the Trump administration tried to bring back Kilmar Abregoa Garcia just days after he was deported, but the president shut them down.

Since Abrego Garcia was unlawfully deported last month due to an administrative error, the White House has vehemently maintained that it will not try to return him to the United States. But a report in The Atlantic Friday revealed that in the days after Abrego Garcia’s deportation, some officials did in fact try to bring him home.

A lawsuit from Abrego Garcia’s family reportedly “sparked urgent conversations among attorneys at the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security,” and concern about the lack of evidence behind Trump’s claims that Abrego Garcia was part of MS-13, sources told The Atlantic.

The officials floated plans for the father of three’s return and sought ways to protect his safety while he was detained in El Salvador’s notorious megaprison, CECOT. But at the same time, backlash against the administration’s response (or lack thereof) took off, prompting the White House to change course entirely. Abrego Garcia’s case was no longer an “administrative error” but now the justified deportation of a “foreign terrorist” and MS-13 member—an evidenceless story Trump is now using to defend his unlawful deportation efforts as a whole.

“Abrego Garcia’s deportation became far more than just the case of one man; it developed into a measure of whether Donald Trump’s administration can send people—citizens or not—to foreign prisons without due process,” The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff wrote.

The Supreme Court has since ordered the White House to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, but few actions have been taken to do so. In an interview with Time published Friday, the president said he had not asked El Salvador to return Abrego Garcia—yet another reminder of the president’s complete disregard for the rule of law.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley begged Trump to impose more sanctions on Russia, something the president will almost certainly never do.

“IVE SEEN ENOUGH KILLING OF INNOCENT UKRAINIAN women + children. President Trump pls put the toughest of sanctions on Putin,” Grassley wrote on X. “U ought to c from clear evidence that he is playing America as a patsy.”

This post comes as the Trump administration signals that it will abandon Ukraine and allow Russia to continue its takeover of the country under the guise of a ceasefire. On Thursday, Trump told reporters that Putin not colonizing Ukraine was some kind of concession. Earlier in the day, he had begged Putin on Truth Social to stop the attacks on Ukraine, but by Friday, Trump had gone back to pressuring Ukraine to sign a mineral rights deal with the United States.

Trump’s close relationship with Russia is a massive change in foreign policy protocol that has even traditional Republicans like Grassley disturbed.

President Donald Trump is refusing to promise that his staff didn’t engage in insider trading.

While speaking with reporters on Air Force One Friday, Trump was asked about a report that people inside the White House had given Wall Street executives a heads-up about an impending trade deal with India.

“Can you commit that that did not happen?” one reporter asked.

“I can commit to myself. That’s all I can commit, you know, I have thousands of people that work for me,” Trump replied. “But I can’t imagine anybody doing that. I have very honorable people, that I can say. So I can’t even imagine it.”

Trump’s insistence that he hires “only the best people” has become something of a running joke, but now it seems that the president won’t even bother to vouch that his staff isn’t breaking the law.

Even if Trump claims he did not engage in insider trading, it’s clear that the president is intrigued by some level of market manipulation. Earlier this month, he openly bragged about how much money his friends made off his abrupt 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs—an announcement that caused stocks to shoot up. Bloomberg reported that the day of this announcement was the “best day ever” for billionaires, as the world’s elite collectively made $304 billion when the markets went back up.

The Trump administration’s decision to target ActBlue has instead resulted in the left-leaning platform’s biggest fundraising day of the year.

On Thursday, Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate the online donations platform, directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into Republican allegations that ActBlue had allowed “‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions or foreign contributions to political candidates and committees.” ActBlue is a crucial fundraising tool for Democrats, as almost all party candidates use it in both primary and general elections.

The announcement inspired donors across the country to open their wallets, handing the Democratic Party a massive financial boost as some PACs more than quadrupled their fundraising within 24 hours of Trump’s memorandum.

“PACs that typically raise $3,000 to $6,000 on a message raised $25,000 and counting,” Turn Left PAC senior adviser Randy Jones told The New Republic Friday.

Prior to Thursday, ActBlue had raised $400 million within the first three months of 2025.

But anxiety over the future of ActBlue under a second Trump administration persists. Despite assurances from ActBlue that service would continue, Democratic strategists and their teams are “drafting contingency plans and evaluating other options,” wary of a president who has expressed complete disregard for the rule of law, according to Jones.

Nixing the platform would deplete the donations pipeline to Democratic candidates. Cory Archibald, communications director at Turn Left PAC, described the open field of Democratic campaign tech as the party’s “Achilles’ heel.”

“There is no other fundraising platform that comes even close to the functionality, security, and stability of ActBlue,” Archibald told TNR. “Democrats need to democratize their campaign tech, and they need to do it yesterday.”

ActBlue has said it will use all the legal means at its disposal to continue its work, denouncing the Trump memorandum as an “oppressive use of power.”

“The Trump Administration’s and GOP’s targeting of ActBlue is part of their brazen attack on democracy in America. Today’s escalation by the White House is blatantly unlawful and needs to be seen for what it is: Donald Trump’s latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition,” ActBlue said in a statement.

Conservatives have repeatedly claimed that ActBlue was acting as a conduit for foreign contributions. In December, an analysis of the fundraising network’s records by Republican Representative Bryan Steil not only failed to advance the theory but instead found proof that the platform’s automated program to reject donations from foreign nationals was working effectively.

Attorney General Pam Bondi warned Friday that the arrest of a judge in Wisconsin was only the beginning of Donald Trump’s law enforcement crackdown on the judiciary.

Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested earlier in the day on charges of obstruction for supposedly misdirecting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away from Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an immigrant attending a pretrial hearing at the Milwaukee County Courthouse last week.

While discussing the case during an appearance on Fox News, Bondi said that judges attempting to help immigrants evade arrest were “deranged.”

“I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not,” Bondi said. “And we are sending a very strong message today: If you are harboring a fugitive, we don’t care who you are, if you are helping hide one, if you are giving a TdA member guns, anyone who is illegally in this country, we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”

Crucially, Dugan is not accused of supplying a member of Tren de Aragua with guns. She is charged with two federal counts of obstruction, one for concealing a person from discovery and arrest, and another for obstruction of federal government proceedings.

According to the Department of Justice’s filing, Dugan allegedly let Florez-Ruiz enter the courtroom through a side door typically reserved for a jury. He then used a public hallway in the courthouse to get into an elevator and exit the building before ICE officers could stop him. If Dugan is convicted, the charges may result in a maximum penalty of six years in prison.

During an appearance in federal court Friday, Dugan’s lawyer Craig Mastantuono said that his client “wholeheartedly protests the arrest and believes it was not made in the interests of public safety.”

Bondi, who has been a fierce defender of the president’s immigration agenda—including its wrongful deportation of immigrants—has now taken up the mantle of antagonizing state and federal judges on behalf of the increasingly hostile executive branch.

Last week, Trump’s director of counterterrorism argued that anyone opposed to Trump’s immigration agenda was “aiding and abetting” terrorists.

Dugan’s arrest comes as Trump continues his widespread attack on immigration judges, eight of whom have been fired or put on leave in the last week across California, Massachusetts, and Louisiana.

The phone number that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was using to discuss sensitive war plans on Signal was used on multiple other public platforms, according to The New York Times.

Hegseth’s number was found on WhatsApp, Facebook, and a fantasy sports website, among other websites. This is another absurd security development for the country’s top defense secretary.

Even lower-ranking officials are warned not to use their personal phone for government purposes. Hegseth’s digital breadcrumbs left all over the internet have almost certainly opened him up to cyberattacks, experts said.

“There’s zero percent chance that someone hasn’t tried to install Pegasus or some other spyware on his phone,” former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center Mike Casey told the Times. “He is one of the top five, probably, most targeted people in the world for espionage.”

This comes as multiple news outlets have detailed chaos and derision inside Hegseth’s Pentagon in his few months as defense secretary.

Read more at The New York Times.

The FBI arrested a sitting U.S. judge Friday for “obstructing an immigration arrest operation,” a jarring escalation in Donald Trump’s nationwide assault on immigrants, the judicial system, and anybody who opposes his mass deportation efforts. Democrats are reeling.

Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested on charges of obstruction after she helped an undocumented immigrant evade arrest in her courtroom, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X Friday morning. The 30-year-old man, originally from Mexico, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, is now in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. His arrest marks at least the third time in recent months that ICE agents have appeared at the courthouse with arrest warrants, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

“Federal law enforcement coming into a community and arresting a judge is a serious matter and would require high legal bar,” Wisconsin Representative Gwen Moore said, shortly after the arrest in her home state. “I will be following this case closely, and facts will come out, however, I am very alarmed at [these] increasingly lawless actions of the Trump Admin, and in particular ICE, who have been defying court orders and acting with disregard for the Constitution.”

“It is remarkable that the Administration would dare to start arresting state court judges,” said Representative Jamie Raskin. “It’s a whole new descent into government chaos.”

“The Trump administration again is breaking norms in how it’s dealing with immigration, the legal system, and normalcy.… This is stuff I expect from Third World countries,” Wisconsin Representative Mark Pocan told Axios.

Representative Darren Soto echoed Pocan’s disbelief that a judge was arrested in the United States. “Arresting federal judges is third world country dictator type of stuff. Everyday they get more desperate,” Soto wrote on X. “This will be bounced out of court as quick as the rest of their illegal actions.”

Senator Tammy Baldwin called Dugan’s arrest a “gravely serious and drastic move,” but in line with Trump’s attack on the rule of law.

The president has ignored a number of court orders relating to his unlawful deportations and will apparently punish anyone who gets in his way. At least eight immigration judges across three states have now been fired or put on leave.

“Make no mistake, we do not have kings in this country and we are a democracy governed by laws that everyone must abide by,” Baldwin said in a statement on X. “While details of this exact case remain minimal, this action fits into the deeply concerning pattern of this president’s lawless behavior and undermining courts and Congress’s checks on his power.”

The Justice Department quietly invoked the Alien Enemies act last month to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents the power to conduct warrantless searches of people’s homes as long as they suspect them to be an “alien enemy.” USA Today obtained the memo that contained this order on Friday.

“As much as practicable, officers should follow the proactive procedures above—and have an executed Warrant of Apprehension and Removal—before contacting an Alien Enemy,” the memo reads. “However, that will not always be realistic or effective in swiftly identifying and removing Alien Enemies.… An officer may encounter a suspected Alien Enemy in the natural course of the officer’s enforcement activity, such as when apprehending other validated members of Tren de Aragua. Given the dynamic nature of enforcement operations, officers in the field are authorized to apprehend aliens upon a reasonable belief that the alien meets all four requirements to be validated as an Alien Enemy. This authority includes entering an Alien Enemy’s residence to make an AEA apprehension where circumstances render it impracticable to first obtain a signed Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal” (emphasis added).

In the memo, the Justice Department defined an “alien enemy” as anyone who is 14 years of age or older, not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, a citizen of Venezuela, and “a member of the hostile enemy Tren de Aragua,” per the Alien Enemy Validation Guide, a document that has already been slammed by immigration experts.

The broad definition has already resulted in the apprehension and deportation of more than 200 men to El Salvador who just happened to have tattoos, like gay makeup artist Andry José Hernández Romero.

This type of order will likely lead to more indiscriminate arrests and wanton racial profiling. The memo, which is from March 14, is another massive departure from the U.S. immigration norms.

Donald Trump’s administration will restore student visas that were terminated “solely based on” minor legal infractions.

The Department of Justice announced in federal court Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was developing a new policy regarding students with F-1 visas. In the meantime, international students’ terminated online visa records would “remain Active or shall be reactivated” in the federal Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or SEVIS, database.

“ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Carilli, referring to the National Crime Information Center, which holds records of students’ misdemeanor charges and dismissed cases that had been used as justification for their loss of legal status.

Crucially, under the current F-1 visa policies, students can only be removed for committing violent felonies, not the minor and dismissed charges levied against the students the Trump administration has targeted.

Earlier this week, a federal judge ordered that the Trump administration reinstate the legal status of 133 students who had their visas revoked by Tuesday evening, arguing that they had been “abruptly and illegally” terminated by ICE.

The Trump administration has terminated the student visa records of nearly 1,900 international students at more than 280 colleges and universities, as part of its crackdown on immigration and pro-Palestinian speech. The terminations have summoned more than 100 lawsuits, with judges in more than 50 cases across 23 states issuing orders to undo the government’s actions.

Donald Trump doesn’t know, or at least isn’t revealing, how much he’s paying Savaldoran President Nayib Bukele to detain immigrants deported from the United States without due process.

After reaffirming he hopes to soon deport American citizens to El Salvador in Time’s “100 Days” interview released Friday, Trump was asked how much money El Salvador is getting to hold more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants unlawfully deported from the U.S.

“I don’t know,” Trump responded. “I could get you the information, but we’re paying less than we would normally.” 

“Did you personally approve those payments?” the interviewer asked Trump.

“No I didn’t,” he replied. 

It’s either a concerning admission or a damning lie from the president, who seemingly knows very little about an international deportation deal that’s been heavily scrutinized across the globe and resulted in multiple court orders, which Trump has ignored. 

The White House previously disclosed that it’s paying Bukele $6 million to hold deportees in the megaprison CECOT, which can hold up to 40,000 inmates and is notorious for human rights abuses. Last week, Democratic Senator Christopher Van Hollen visited the country and reported that he believes the deal is closer to $15 million.

Van Hollen had made the trip to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador and detained in CECOT due to an admitted administrative error from the Trump administration. His deportation prompted vigorous pushback from a handful of Democrats who are fighting for his return. Abrego Garcia is now being held at a lower-security prison, but Trump maintains that the father of three—whom he baselessly claims is part of MS-13—will remain in El Salvador despite a ruling from the Supreme Court ordering the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return.  

Trump played dumb yet again when asked by Time about Abrego Garcia’s release. “I leave that to my lawyers. I give them no instructions,” he said of the Supreme Court’s directions. 

“Have you asked President Bukele to return him?” the interviewer asked.

“I haven’t, uh, he said he wouldn’t,” Trump responded, before delving into the White House’s go-to lie about immigrant men with tattoos. “He wasn’t a saint. He was MS-13,” Trump said, despite there being no evidence connecting Abrego Garcia to MS-13.  

The interviewer asked Trump if he thought Abrego Garcia deserved a court hearing regardless.

“That’s not my determination,” the president said—a pathetic response, given he’s done literally whatever he wants in his first 100 days in office.