The Department of Justice has dismissed Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s request for sanctions, advising the wrongfully deported Salvadoran, who now faces human smuggling accusations, to reflect on his own actions before criticizing others for extrajudicial comments.

In a recent filing on Monday at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, the government expressed its support for Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino. The agent had made comments about two weeks earlier on Fox News and Newsmax that, while not mentioning Abrego Garcia by name, were evidently referring to him. This prompted the criminal defendant to file a motion seeking sanctions.

On December 11, a federal judge in Maryland ordered Abrego Garcia’s release from ICE detention, strongly criticizing the Trump administration for detaining him “without lawful authority.” The judge noted that the administration had misled the court about Costa Rica’s willingness to accept him as a refugee and confirmed that there was no existing order for his removal from the United States.

The following day in Baltimore, Abrego Garcia, with the help of an activist providing live translation, publicly denounced the “injustice” he faced during a news conference. Speaking in Spanish, he vowed to continue his fight against the perceived injustices inflicted upon him by the government, expressing hope that these issues would eventually be resolved.

During the same event, Representative Glenn Ivey, a Democrat from Maryland, stood alongside Abrego Garcia, criticizing the actions of the Trump administration. Ivey described the administration’s actions as “shameful,” accusing them of “kidnapping” Abrego Garcia and bringing “fake charges” in Tennessee. He suggested these charges could face a similar fate as those against James Comey and Letitia James.

At the same rally, DOJ emphasized, Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., stated while next to Abrego Garcia that the “shameful” Trump administration “kidnapped” him and then brought “fake charges down in Tennessee” that could go “the same direction” as the charges against James Comey and Letitia James.

Later that same day, Bovino separately joined Fox News’ Jesse Watters to react, as the network’s chyrons read “Kilmar’s Home for the Holidays,” “Kilmar Wants to Fight, Fight, Fight,” and “Kilmar’s Back & He Brought the Bulls Hat,” which Watters has said “means you’re MS-13.”

During the appearance, Bovino, one of the most recognizable faces if not “the face” of the Trump administration’s deportation operation on the ground, stated that it’s “too bad that we have these activist judges that legislate from the bench and put MS-13 gang members back out on the streets to harm Americans.”

“That’s what we’re doing in these American cities, are taking individuals like this, quote, Maryland Dad, out of circulation and putting them back where they need to be, and that’s in their country of record,” Bovino added, not naming Abrego Garcia but mocking the “Maryland Dad” description of him.

Two days later, Bovino made similar comments on Newsmax to host Jon Glasgow and the viewing audience:

We have an MS-13 gang member walking the streets. As you said, a wife-beater, but also, let’s not forget, he was also an alien smuggler. So here’s someone that wants immigration relief, he wants to, to leech off the United States, and thinks it’s okay to do that. And that Jon, maybe you and I have done something wrong? Wrong answer. When he becomes deportable, he is going to get deported. And he needs to be deported now. That’s what you get when you have an extremist judge, or judges, that legislate from the bench. You have MS-13 gang members ready to prey on Americans yet again. And that’s the very thing we’re trying to stop here with President Trump and Kristi Noem’s immigration efforts here in the homeland.

Garcia’s sanctions motion was filed five days later, asking U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, Jr., a Barack Obama appointee who has found the defendant made a “prima facie showing of vindictiveness” by the government, to punish the Trump administration for Bovino’s “highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and false statements” on cable news.

The request was a callback to Crenshaw’s prior warnings to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem about a local rule that “prohibits DOJ and DHS employees from making extrajudicial statements that will ‘have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing’ Abrego’s right to a ‘fair trial.’”

Bovino is such an employee, given that Border Patrol is part of DHS, and thus sanctions are “warranted,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said.

The DOJ has now fired back by slamming the human smuggling defendant’s demand as a “grave,” misguided, and hypocritical endeavor aimed at “muzzling an entire agency.”

“By casting himself as the victim of injustice that he intends to ‘keep fighting’ while his advocates claim that the present Indictment are ‘false charges’ and are ‘shameful,’ the Defendant would do well to keep his own hands clean before claiming that the Government’s are somehow dirtied,” the DOJ said. “The defense now accuses the Government of violating the Court’s order regarding extrajudicial statements and the Local Rule while the Defendant and his advocates are violating them.”

The DOJ downplayed Bovino’s remarks in multiple ways, noting he “does not have editorial control of news chyrons” and that he did not name Abrego Garcia in the “all of about thirty seconds” of words he uttered on Fox News.

The same was true of the Newsmax segment, the government went on.

“Two days later, the same agent made largely similar comments, critiquing the immigration justice system, reiterated that the Defendant would be deported again if he was ordered deported and, again, did not mention the Defendant by name,” the opposition filing continued. “And, in both instances, Mr. Bovino made his remarks only after the Defendant, his lawyers in his civil case, and activists working on his behalf made unduly prejudicial statements at his rally on the steps of the ICE office in Baltimore.”

The last line gets to the heart of the DOJ’s position, which is that the local rule “does not apply to” Bovino because he is a “non-lawyer in a governmental agency that is not litigating this matter.”

But in the event the rule did apply, the government contends, Bovino was simply correcting the record for his “client” in the face of “wild assertions” made by Abrego Garcia, his lawyers and “sympathizers about this prosecution.”

If Crenshaw were to punish this activity, it would have “grave” constitutional implications, the DOJ added.

“[H]is statements fall squarely within subsection (a)(3)’s carveout for statements necessary to protect a client from substantial undue prejudice,” the filing stated. “And a holding to the contrary would raise grave First Amendment and separation-of-powers concerns by punishing Mr. Bovino for the content of his speech, creating prior constraints, and muzzling an entire agency that does not even have lawyers appearing in this case.”