Bulwark Takes - Kids Watched Their Mom Taken Away at the Airport

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Sam Stein and Andrew Egger take on new developments in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case and the heartbreaking story of a Massachusetts mom with four kids both devastating cases that left families broken and afraid. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BULWARKTAKES at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing out at the bulwark, joined by Andrew Eger, MorningShott's co-author. Here to talk about Kilmar Abrago-Garcia. Big things happening today. You guys probably know the story of the case, but Andrew this morning, we woke up. There's some new news. This is kind of a moving target. So as we're speaking, which is like 10-15 this morning, tell us the latest. For the last while, basically since he came back to the U.S., Kilmer-Abrigo-Gargea-Garcia has been in custody, not of immigration. officials, but he's been under custody for the criminal charges that the White House has brought, the Justice Department has brought against him supposedly for smuggling people, other undocumented immigrants from one point of the country to the other in 2022. That's why he's been in custody. Over the weekend, he was released for the first time since he became sort of a household name,

he was allowed to walk free for the duration of this weekend, released from a federal or a federal prison in Tennessee and was at home over the weekend. But this morning, in Baltimore, he was required to report back into ICE custody in Baltimore. And he was widely expected to be re-detained. And that's what happened. He showed up at an ICE facility in Maryland and was taken back into custody. He and his wife walked in, only his wife walked out. And the Department of Homeland Security has immediately announced its plans to move forward with deporting him not to El Salvador, where he can't be deported, according to a former stay from a judge, and also not to anywhere nearby, but over to Uganda is what they have recently announced.

Presumably, there's tons of family members there and ties and all that. Yeah, yeah, obviously not. And this is a thing that his lawyers have characterized, and I think obviously accurately as just completely punitive, The Justice Department and DHS were putting forward a plea deal for Kilmer-Abrigo Garcia over the weekend, where if he would agree to plead guilty to these federal charges that they have slapped on him in a sort of a face-saving measure to try to make him look bad and make them look better for deporting him to El Salvador in the first place, if he would agree to plead guilty to that, he would serve some time in prison here, and then he would have been deported to Costa Rica, is what the deal on the the table was. Instead, what appears to be the case is that he did not agree to take that plea. He has pled not guilty to those charges.

He is currently trying to get a judge to throw them out as essentially being a targeted unjust political prosecution. And so instead, what they are now trying to do is, all right, you know, we tried to, we tried to be nice. We tried to give you a way out. And so instead, I think it's just amazing because this is this is immigration policy, not criminal enforcement, right? But what they're now trying to do is to deport him deliberately to a place where he has no connections in order to kind of hit him for not taking this plea.

Let's just take a pause and just be candid about, I think, what happened here, which is the government fucked up. They fucked up, and then they compounded their fuck up with a sort of regime of cruelty towards this one individual because they couldn't admit that they fucked up. The original fuckup was sending him to El Salvador, which they were not allowed to do. And when it was exposed, they sent him to El Salvador, they created a image of this man. And some of it may be true. We don't know. This is why you adjudicate these things. But they created this image of this man who was a wife beater, who was a smuggler, who, in their telling, would go continuously from Maryland to Texas and back and forth over ungodly amount of hours, smuggling illegal immigrants into the country, who may have transported minors.

I mean, they made all these allegations just because they fucked up. And then they detained him and they brought him back, even though they said they couldn't bring him back. And they put these charges against him. And now they're saying, well, you know what? We'll be nice to you and send you to Costa Rica if you admit to this, if you plead guilty to these charges. Or we'll send you to Uganda. And it's like, that's not a real choice. They're basically just trying to compound their fuck up by being more cruel to the guy.

And they think they're smart about it. And you can jump in at any point here, but like they think they're so smart about it because they think, oh, well, we get all these people defending this guy who's a bad guy and, you know, look at these libs who defend this guy. When in reality, the defenses, just do things properly. Just go by the usual letter of the law, follow the proper procedures. If you end up deporting the guy through proper procedures, fine. But don't be an asshole about it. And that's essentially what they're doing here, is just compounding their fuck up by being an asshole. Sorry, I know if it's silly and crude, but that's basically what it is.

No, it's 100% what it is. And we should drill down specifically on this plea thing, too, because this is, I mean, this is really kind of where it gets beyond the pale if it wasn't already. Because ordinarily, and look, like plea agreements are already sort of overused around America. It's like a longtime criminal justice thing that it's like it's too common for prosecutors to kind of threaten that they're going to soak a guy with all kinds of charges in order to get him to plead down to something. smaller. There are reasons why that happens. It's a bit of a thorny debate. But the whole thing there is that if you don't take the plea, then you're rolling the dice at trial, right? Like before a jury or whatever, which is not at all what the Justice Department is trying to say here. What they're

trying to say here is take the plea, plead guilty to these criminal charges, or we're going to try really hard to short circuit your criminal trial to not let you go to trial at all and instead to dump you across an ocean in Uganda. Now, why would they not want it to go to trial? Why would they not want that? If they think they have the goods in this guy, right? They have the goods in this guy. They put together this comprehensive complaint against them.

They say they have, you know, geo-trackers, having him in Texas, and then dropping people off across the country illegally. If they have the goods, wouldn't they want to go to trial? And I don't want to, like, get this twisted, because it is totally possible that there is some criminal behavior that they would be able to prove against Kilmer of Bergo-Garcy. The problem for them is that the criminal behavior, even that they themselves have alleged in the indictment, is not even close to the stuff that they have gotten up at podiums at the White House and what Pam Bondi has said outside of a courtroom about him in terms of just like him being like a high-ranking MS-13 gangbanger and throwing around the term human trafficking and all those sorts of things. If you actually sit down and read the indictment that they charge against him, human trafficking is not the crime.

It's not the alleged crime. Human trafficking is a terrible crime that involves taking people from one place to another against their will, which is not what Kilmer Abrigo Garcia has been charged with. Kilmer Abrigo Garcia has just been charged with basically taking people from point A to point B who are in the country illegally, right? Like kind of helping move them to the interior of the country. Still a crime. If they can prove it in court, then they ought to and it ought to be charged as such. But it's, but the thing, but the point I'm trying to make is that even that doesn't really get them where they want to get, which is this guy's like, like, pure evil. And he ought to be like, smacked out of the mouth of the United States of America. That's my point. They don't have the goods. They just want to make an example of this guy. And, um, you know, maybe they'll end up making an example of him. And, and they will get him to Uganda. I should note that his attorneys, uh, or his attorney has, uh, father. a legal action to block his immediate deportation.

It's a habeas petition. It's with the judge who handled the earlier legal proceedings that involved in being Sintel Salvador. We'll see how it plays out, but he's got the full way to the federal government going after him. This is, it's unlikely that he's going to end up in a good spot here. Polwork takes is sponsored by One Skin product. I've been slinging for a while now, so much so that I've had, I think, a couple of friends that have caught strays for me about how they need to be using one skin, either for their face and their wrinkles or for their scalp and their thinning hair. I've taken a little heat over that. Sorry for the real talk. And if you don't want me coming

after you like that, one skin is the way to go. Let me explain. One skin's proprietary OS1 peptide is the first ingredient proven to switch off the damage senescent cells that cause lines, wrinkles, and thin, creaky skin. Not creepy skin, creepy skin. The creepy skin can be creepy, I guess, free from over 1,500 chemicals and preservatives that can make skin red, irritated, or itchy their products, or certified safe for sensitive skin. Dermatologist tested and approved by independent testing platforms. The cleanser and topical supplements can all be used with other products or treatments and easily fit into your current skin care routine. One Skin is world's first skin longevity company by focus on the cellular aspects of aging one skin keeps your skin looking and acting younger for longer. For limited time, you can try one skin.

with 15% off using code bulwark takes at oneskin.co. That's 15% off, oneskin.co with code bulwark takes. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Give your skin the scientifically proven gentle care it deserves with one skin. I wanted to note another story because, you know, obviously, you know, we're just sort of drowning in the cruelty of the immigration regime here. But this one really caught my mind.

It's not Camara Brigarcia, but to a degree, it does illustrate just how much this dragnet has impacted people both here legally and illegally and for, like, real crimes and, like, totally petty crimes that are, you know, years old. So this story popped up. It's from masslive.com. I'm just going to read parts of it, but it involves a husband who watched his wife, this guy named Marcel Rosa, who watched his wife, Jimmy Jimenez Rosa. being taken away, and this was at Boston Logan on August 11th, what happened was she was detained after they came back from Mexico. They had their three young daughters with them. And Jimenez Rosa is a legal permanent resident. She's actually a mother of four U.S. citizens. Her lawyers believe she was detained because of a decades-old personal use marijuana charge,

which is no longer a crime in Massachusetts. So what happens is they get in, they detained, the mother, and the husband in front of the ICE agents, or the agents, I should say, says, quote, I was just like girls, we might never see your mother again in this country. I looked over to the officer and said, am I telling the truth? And he said, yeah, that could be possible. I told my kids right in front of the officer that she's being arrested, and the girls just started crying, hugging her.

The husband said, I know most parents would not have told that to their kids, but there was no way I was going to allow those officers to think they're just going to rip my wife away from my family thinking it's going to be business as usual. The girls just clung to him and started crying. And the wife ended up being detained for 10 days. The family was thrust into what the paper says is a bureaucratic maze as the 42-year-old mother was shoveled between detention facilities, including one for men only. From Massachusetts to Maine, she was denied proper health care for her diabetes, asthma, and other serious health issues, which led to two hospitalizations, her lawyer said. All this happened while her husband, who was a former Department of Homeland Security employee who grew up in Boston,

struggled to locate her and secure her release through court intervention. I'll just read how it ends up because it's disturbing how it all ends up. She ends up being released. This is how the paper describes it. Jimenez-Rosa's time in custody ended with her alone, wet, and begging for help at a cheesecake factory in the Burlington Mall after ICE agents released her into the rainy street outside the detention facility Wednesday, night she was 30 miles from home with no phone in a broken spirit the family fears that their nightmare will never truly end i know i'm like speechless about it yeah it's what what do you say about a story like

that i mean it's in in some respect these are the good stories i guess i guess they have an ending these are the ones where like a person gets swept up in the drag head like like it's It's horrifying in every respect. This person should never have been swept up in this deportation dragnet. It shows, like, unbelievable failures in policy. It's unbelievably traumatic for the family. And the kicker is that, like, even though these are, like, quote, unquote, the better outcomes, these are, like, the only way, these stories where, like, the person where ICE realizes

that they kind of made a mistake and they put the person back or close to back 30 miles away at a fucking cheesecake factory. And they're able to kind of then come out and talk about what happened to them. I mean, anytime it's a citizen getting swept up in this dragnat or a legal permanent resident, I mean, the conditions they talk about are uniformly horrifying. Like nobody knows what's going on. It's totally slapdash. They're shuttled from facility to facility.

They don't get to talk to their lawyer. They don't get the treatment they need. I mean, this is in every story. And it's not like the people who shouldn't be getting swept up in this are getting treated worse. These are the only glimpses we get into this totally chaotic, totally inhumane, totally barbaric system that is handling thousands and thousands of new people who get swept up into it every single day in this country, most of whom are either just detained indefinitely at this point or are getting deported and so aren't able to tell these stories. But it's,

I mean, the scale of the brutality here is something that I think we still haven't really gotten our heads around. And the only way, I mean, The only way to do it is to continue to focus on these individual stories and the individual human harms. But it is grotesque. I mean, it's really, really bad out there. Yeah, I had someone asked me who is like in this field of advocacy being like, what do we do about this stuff? And honestly, the only answer I had to this person was you just got to keep documenting that it's happening, right? In this case, this woman, just to be clear, was a 20-year-old college student when she was arrested for possessing a small amount of marijuana.

She actually pleaded guilty and fully served probation for it. This was 2003, so 22 years ago. The only thing I would just say is, yes, fair enough, this is the good ending in that she was returned 10 days after going through whatever hell she had to go through, dropped off at a cheesecake factory in a rain. What the fuck? But like, her kids witnessed all this in real time. The mom being pulled away and detained at an airport and sent away. and the father being like, you may never see your mother again. And he was being honest with him.

And that doesn't just end there. I mean, there's some lingering trauma that comes with something like that. And so even in these good stories, the story doesn't end there. This is going to impact the kids forever. This is going to impact this family forever. She will never, I imagine, travel internationally again. She might never, you know, I have no idea what they're going to think, but she's certainly going to have to think about her future here with her family,

with this hanging over her head, it's awful and this is what we're doing what is the what's the upside what's the upshot for this like is she is she a threat she's here legally is she a threat like what are we doing yeah yeah i feel like we glossed over the fact that the the precipitating cause of all of this was the fact that several decades ago while she was in college she was busted for a minor marijuana possession so they're clearly going through all these old reports looking for any infraction for any green cardholder or anything like that so it's it's a dark time clearly Can we talk, talk just real briefly again about the reaction of the dad that you mentioned there?

Because, like, I definitely could imagine a person being like, well, you know, like, play it cool for the sake of your kids. You know, like, don't like let it, you know, don't make this big scene now. But also at the same time, like, plainly, this was like a person who has been following these stories who has, like, just, just seen the way that people are just getting vacuumed up. And, like, in a way, I mean, like, and this is another just kind of really. grotesque feature of a lot of these stories that you read, where, like, at the point of arrest, at the point of detention, the people are still kind of feeling like, is there some mistake here? Like, what's, surely, surely these people are not blowing up my life right now because of this nonsense that happened, you know, two decades ago or whatever, like, like, surely there's been some

mistake. Surely there's going to be some sort of like, somebody higher up will realize that something has gone wrong and it will be attended to. And, like, in a lot of these stories, it doesn't, it doesn't get attended to. It's just, their lives are just ruined, like, forever. And so, like, you can, you can put yourselves in the shoes of that guy. I'd be like, no, fuck, no, you're not going to take my wife here without us, like, making you feel what you're doing to us, like, you agents of the state right now. And I totally get that.

I mean, I'm totally sympathetic to that. It's just horrible. It does affect you because you see all these videos that people are shooting, including in D.C., actually, where people are being detained. And, like, the only recourse they have in that moment is to plead to. to the humanity of the agent who is arresting them or detaining them. And to say, there's one viral that was going around in DC where this guy was like, my wife just gave birth, like literally, she cannot walk, she cannot move.

I need to get to her and he was detained. And all the people in DC right now who are chanting against these, these guardsmen and ICE agents and FBI officials being like, do you have no humanity? Like, don't you understand what you're doing? Like, think about what legacy you're leaving. Like, it's just them pleading with these people to say, be a better person. And in this case, the same thing.

A father who made the decision, I don't know how the fuck I would react in that moment, who made the decision to plead with this agent saying, tell my kids to their faith that they may never see their mother again in the United States. And the agent apparently saying, yeah, that's true. You might not. And then proceeding with it anyway. So, well, this has been uplifting. Really good start to the day.

Andrew, thank you so much. I appreciate it. No, I really do appreciate that you're still on this story. So, thank you. Can I, can I circle around just say one other thing about. Yeah, of course, Rego Garcia here at the end? Well, just because I think, just to put kind of a bow on it, because, like, just going by, like, him playing the percentages in his own case, like, I don't know, I might have taken the deal to go to Costa Rica and just, like, said what the government wanted me to say. And, like, you know, it's hard to put yourself in that shoes and turn that down when the alternative is so horrific. And like, like you say, like, we don't know to what extent

he's, like, a great guy, to what extent he may have done various unsavory things, like, in his life. But, like, I think it is, like, actually basically heroic to, like, to refuse to go along with this whole thing for all the reasons we've been talking about and refuse to, like, make yourself a mouthpiece for the government and get yourself a slightly better deal here. Because, like, the whole thing is so unbelievably grotesque. And the fact that he is actually fighting it to the extent that he can, I think, is really laudable. we'll see how it ends up good bow thank you for putting the bow on that andrew eager appreciate you man talk to you later for everyone who watch this appreciate you guys watching subscribe to the feed so you

can get more content and conversations like this talk to you soon