POTUS has not asked El Salvador to return illegally deported man

 According to The New Republic, President Donald Trump’s lawlessness is getting worse, but the public is now clearly rejecting it. Trump gave a new interview in which he made some striking admissions about the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia that only demonstrate how reprehensible his treatment of this whole saga has become. Meanwhile, new polling shows a large public backlash to Trump’s extra-legal tactics. We don’t think that Trump and Stephen Miller anticipated this public response. We think they thought they had successfully acclimated voters to their lawlessness. The opposite is happening. Yet all signs are that they’ll continue plunging us into this abyss. The New Republic interviewed Chris Newman, who’s one of the lawyers for Abrego Garcia’s family and is general counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Here are some excerpts:

Question: President Trump was interviewed recently by Time magazine.  He was asked about Kilmar Abrego Garcia Trump, “Have you asked Bukele to return him?” Trump admitted, "I haven’t," and said his lawyers have not told him he has to. Chris, that’s an astounding admission. Your response?

Newman: Like everything, it’s difficult to interpret. On the one hand, it appears that Trump is softening and indeed backing away from the position of Stephen Miller, who appears to be higher on the organizational chart than his own vice president. On the other hand, it seems to be an admission as well that he’s violating the Supreme Court order because the order clearly said that he was supposed to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And the fact that he hasn’t tried seems to be a dead to rights admission that he is not complying with the order. From a political lens, it appears to reflect what is actually happening, which is public opinion is turning against Trump on this issue, and on immigration broadly. But as a legal matter, again, we continue to inch closer and closer to the proverbial constitutional crisis that people have been afraid of and some would even say—potentially rightly—that we’re already there.

Question: Well, he is currently defying the Supreme Court, which has again ordered him to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return and he’s not doing that. To your point, Chris, the Time magazine interviewers actually did press Donald Trump on the thing you raised. They said, Well, OK, if you haven’t asked Bukele to return him, then aren’t you violating the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate his return? Trump stammered and said something like, Well, the lawyers aren’t telling me I have to do that. They don’t really want to do that at this juncture. That strikes me as pretty damning. Trump is admitting it’s an option, but he’s not taking it.

Newman: Yeah, and it makes you wonder which lawyer, if any, he’s talking to. For example, is he talking to Erez Reuveni, the Department of Justice lawyer who admitted that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported and then subsequently fired—seemingly because of that admission? Or is he talking to Pam Bondi? Or in fact, is he just making it entirely up and he hasn’t spoken to any lawyers at all? The fact is that we don’t know. And also the fact is that this is also part of this trick mirror thing where Trump is trying to make it seem like he ultimately is all three branches of government. It doesn’t really matter whether he’s spoken to lawyers or not. His administration must comply with the Supreme Court order.

Question: Right, and he was actually asked during the interview whether generally speaking he thinks he has to comply with the Supreme Court. And of course he said, I greatly respect the justices and so forth. I think that they may be moving toward compliance. I want to flag another moment from the Time interview. Trump was asked why he won’t just bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States and retry him for deportation through lawful channels. Trump answered: “It’s something that, frankly, bringing him back and retrying him wouldn’t bother me.”

But then Trump adds again that his lawyers “don’t want to do that” at this moment. To be clear, Chris, the administration does have the option of bringing him back and recontesting his withholding of removal status or seeking to deport him to a third country. Trump now just said flat out that he’d be OK with this. Well, what the hell are we waiting for then? How is this not a big deal?

Newman: Again, I don’t know. All we’re asking for is for Kilmar Abrego Garcia to get a fair hearing and due process that is entitled to all of us in the U.S. And then the chips can fall where they may. The fact that he’s being deprived of that and they continue to double down is not just something that’s putting Kilmar’s life at risk. It’s putting all of our rights at risk because, again, this is the proverbial test case as to whether or not Donald Trump can suspend core elements of the Constitution whenever he wants. And if he gets away with it on this case—because maybe the political winds are going this way or that way—there’s no question that there will be an erosion of constitutional rights for every single person in the country.

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Trump's DOJ is coming after journalists after attacks on judges, lawyers, colleges, universities and other dissenters

 The Justice Department reversed a Biden administration policy that prevented federal officials from seeking journalists' records and compelling their testimony in leak investigations. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated that reporters' records could be subpoenaed for reasons broader than unauthorized disclosures of classified information, according to an internal memo obtained by CBS News. Bondi said the reversal was necessary for "safeguarding classified, privileged, and other sensitive information." The memo also decried leaks that "undermine" President Trump's agenda. 

"This Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump's policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people," Bondi said. 

"This conduct is illegal and wrong, and it must stop," she said. 

Bondi said she supports a free and independent press and the Justice Department would only subpoena reporters' records as a last resort. Under the new rules outlined in the memo, subpoenaed journalists are entitled to advance notice, subpoenas are to be "narrowly drawn" and warrants should "limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities." Bondi said she must approve all efforts to question or arrest journalists. 

During the Trump administration, prosecutors obtained the phone records of journalists at CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post as part of leak investigations, all three outlets reported in 2021, citing disclosures from the Biden-era Department of Justice.

In 2022, attorney general Merrick Garland issued regulations that restricted federal prosecutors from seizing reporters' communications records, except in rare cases.

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Mangino discusses tariff challenge on WFMJ-TV

Watch my interview with Lindsay McCoy on WFMJ-TV21 discussing the lawsuit file by 11 Attorneys General filed against Trump administration over tariffs.

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Alabama murderer who wanted to die executed by lethal injection

 The 14th Execution of 2025

An Alabama man, James Osgood, 55, who dropped his appeals and said he deserved to die for a 2010 rape and murder was executed on the evening of April 24, 2025, using his final words to apologize to the woman he killed, reported The Associated Press.

Osgood was pronounced dead at 6:35 p.m. following a three-drug injection at a south Alabama prison, authorities said.

A jury in 2014 convicted Osgood of capital murder in the death of Tracy Lynn Brown in Chilton County. Prosecutors said Osgood cut her throat after he and his girlfriend sexually assaulted her.

Strapped to a gurney and wearing a tan prison uniform, Osgood used his last moments to speak about his victim.

“I haven’t said her name since that day,” Osgood said, adding that was because he was unsure if he should say it. “Tracy, I apologize.”

The curtains opened to the witness room at 6:09 p.m. It was unclear what time the injection began. As the execution got underway, Osgood looked toward family members seated in a witness room. Family and friends cried quietly as he lost consciousness.

His breathing became deep and labored and his head fell back on the gurney at about 6:15 p.m. His breathing was no longer visible by about 6:18 p.m. Several minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

Brown, 44, was found dead in her home on Oct. 23, 2010, after her employer became concerned when she did not show up for work.

Prosecutors said Osgood admitted to police that he and his girlfriend sexually assaulted Brown after discussing how they had shared fantasies about kidnapping and torturing someone. The pair forced their victim to perform sex acts at gunpoint. They said Osgood then killed Brown by cutting her throat. His girlfriend, who was Brown’s cousin, was sentenced to life in prison.

The jury in 2014 took 40 minutes to convict him and unanimously recommended a death sentence. His initial death sentence was thrown out by an appeals court. At resentencing in 2018, Osgood asked for another death sentence, saying he didn’t want the families to endure another hearing.

Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said the victim’s family members witnessed the execution in a separate viewing room. They chose not to make a statement to the media, he said.

Gov. Kay Ivey issued a statement, calling the killing “premeditated, gruesome and disturbing.”

“I pray that her loved ones can feel some sense of closure today,” the governor said.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said “my heart and prayers are with Tracy’s family.”

“No one should have to endure the pain they’ve carried or relive the horror of her tragic and senseless death,” Marshall added.

Osgood told AP last week he had dropped his appeals because he was guilty and thought his execution should go forward.

“I’m a firm believer in — like I said in court — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I took a life, so mine was forfeited. I don’t believe in sitting here and wasting everybody’s time and everybody’s money,” Osgood said.

The Death Penalty Information Center reported last year that 165 of the 1,650 people executed since 1977 had asked to be put to death. A moratorium on the death penalty ended that year, and the center said the overwhelming majority of the execution volunteers since had histories of mental illness, substance abuse or suicidal ideation.

Alison Mollman, who represented Osgood for the last decade, said in a statement that Osgood — called “Taz” by his friends — was “more than his worst actions.”

“He made mistakes, terrible ones that he regretted until his dying day, but he didn’t make excuses for his actions. He was accountable and he was sincere,” said Mollman, legal director for the ACLU of Alabama.

The execution was the second in Alabama this year and the 14th in the nation overall.

On Feb. 6, Alabama used nitrogen gas to execute Demetrius Frazier, 52, for his conviction in the 1991 rape and killing of a 41-year-old woman. Alabama in 2024 became the first state to conduct nitrogen gas executions, putting three people to death by that method last year. It involves replacing breathable air with pure nitrogen gas through a respirator mask, causing death by lack of oxygen.

For decades, lethal injection was the preferred way to execute death row prisoners in the U.S. But recent problems procuring and administering the drugs led some states to consider alternative methods. Condemned prisoners in Alabama can choose execution by injection, the electric chair or nitrogen gas.

Osgood picked lethal injection. Hamm said it took a total of five attempts to get the two required IV lines connected to Osgood.

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Texas executes man for strangling to death a young mother 20 years ago

 The 13th Execution of 2025

 A Texas man convicted of fatally strangling and stabbing a young mother more than 20 years ago was executed on the evening of April 24, 2025 as the victim’s mother and other relatives looked on, reported The Associated Press.

Moises Sandoval Mendoza, 41, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m. He was sentenced to death for his conviction in the March 2004 killing of 20-year-old Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson.

After a spiritual adviser prayed over him for about two minutes, Mendoza apologized repeatedly to the victim’s two parents and other relatives present, calling to each by name. “I am sorry for having robbed you of Rachelle’s life,” he said, addressing the parents, one of her brothers, a cousin and an uncle watching through a window from an adjoining room.

Mendoza also said he had robbed Tolleson’s daughter of her mother, adding, “I’m sorry for that. I know nothing that I could ever say or do would ever make up for that. I want you to know that I am sincere. I apologize.” The daughter wasn’t present for the execution.

He then spoke briefly in Spanish, addressing his wife, his sister and two friends watching through a window from another witness room. “I love you, I am with you, I am well and at peace,” he said in Spanish, his words provided in a transcript in English translation. “You know that I’m well, and everything is love.”

As the injection began, he could be heard making two loud gasps and then began snoring. After about 10 snores, all movement ceased and he was pronounced dead 19 minutes later.

Prosecutors say Mendoza, 41, took Tolleson from her north Texas home, leaving her 6-month-old daughter alone. The infant was found cold and wet but safe the next day by Tolleson’s mother. Tolleson’s body was discovered six days later, left in a field near a creek.

Evidence in Mendoza’s case showed he also had burned Tolleson’s body to hide his fingerprints. Dental records were used to identify her, according to investigators.

Pam O’Neil, the victim’s mother, told reporters after witnessing Mendoza’s execution that it could not undo the loss of her daughter. Reading from a statement, she said of Mendoza: “He’s been on death row 20 years. That ended today. He was put to sleep. He felt no pain. I wish I could say the same about my daughter’s death.”

As Mendoza’s relatives and friends left the prison, they appeared distraught and embraced one another.

Hours earlier on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a final request by Mendoza’s attorneys to stop his execution. Mendoza’s attorneys told the justices in a filing that he had been prevented by lower courts from arguing that he had been denied effective assistance of counsel earlier in the appeals process.

But the Texas Attorney General’s Office told the Supreme Court that Mendoza’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel had previously been found “meritless and insubstantial” by a lower federal court.

Lower courts also had previously rejected his petitions for a stay. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday denied Mendoza’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty.

Authorities said that in the days before the killing, Mendoza had attended a party at Tolleson’s home in Farmersville, located about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northeast of Dallas. On the day her body was found, Mendoza told a friend about the killing. The friend called police, and Mendoza was arrested.

Mendoza confessed to police but couldn’t give detectives a reason for the killing, authorities said. He told investigators he repeatedly choked Tolleson, sexually assaulted her and dragged her body to a field, where he choked her again and then stabbed her in the throat. He later moved her body to a more remote location and burned it, they said.

Mendoza was the third inmate put to death this year in Texas, historically the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, and the 13th in the U.S.

On Thursday, Alabama plans to execute James Osgood for the 2010 rape and murder of a woman.

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Lawyers face intensive scrutiny at the border

 Amir Makled thought he was being racially profiled. A Lebanese American who was born and raised in Detroit, the attorney was returning home from a family vacation in the Dominican Republic when he said an immigration official at the Detroit Metro airport asked for a “TTRT” agent after scanning his passport, reported The Guardian. Makled said the expression on the agent’s face changed. He felt something “odd” was happening.

“So I Googled what TTRT meant. I didn’t know,” Makled said. “And what I found out was it meant Tactical Terrorism Response Team. So immediately I knew they’re gonna take me in for questioning. And that’s when I felt like I was being racially profiled or targeted because I am Arab.”

But it quickly became apparent, Makled said, that the stop was different from the type of so-called random stop Muslims and Arab-Americans have become accustomed to at US airports. The plainclothes immigration officer said he knew who Makled was and what he did for a living, according to the lawyer; agents wanted to search his phone.

“They made it clear right off the top: ‘We know that you’re an attorney and we know that you’re taking on some higher-profile cases.’ I was like, ‘OK, well, what do you want from me?’” Makled recalled.

Among the high-profile cases Makled has taken on recently: a pro-Palestinian student protester who was arrested at a demonstration at the University of Michigan.

Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the search of Makled’s phone “outrageous”.

“CBP or [the Department of Homeland Security] could not show up at this attorney’s office and say: ‘give me your contact list’ without a warrant,” Cope said. “That would be completely illegal. But because this guy is at the border, and they want it for potentially just domestic monitoring and enforcement, somehow now the fourth amendment goes away.”

Both citizens and non-citizens entering the US are potentially subject to having their phones searched at the border. Fourth amendment protections, which guard against “unreasonable search and seizure”, have been weakened at US points of entry. CBP’s role is to stop people or goods that could pose a threat to the US from entering the country. In the case of US citizens, CBP may pull a traveler whom agents have security concerns about – anything from drug or sex trafficking to espionage concerns – but must ultimately admit them into the country, Cope said.

However, there have been many recent cases of CBP pulling a US citizen about whom they have no border security concerns into a secondary screening at the behest of other federal agencies, Cope said. The FBI, for example, has in the past asked CBP to put flags on people’s travel profiles so that when they cross the border they are pulled into secondary inspection, she said.

“That may be because the person is under domestic investigation themselves or because the traveler is associated with somebody who’s under investigation and the government’s just trying to get around the warrant requirement,” Cope said.

Cope said that, based on the existing information, it doesn’t appear Makled’s stop was routine. “If they tell him: ‘We know you’re a lawyer,’ and then this terrorism flag popped up, that’s not routine, that’s pre-planned,” Cope said.

CBP has access to a vast array of databases through which agents can gain access to personal information about individuals who are traveling into or out of the US. One of these repositories may have contained a “lookout” designation for Makled, a flag on his file that can lead to a secondary screening. Those “lookouts” can remain on a person’s file as long as CBP deems them “pertinent”, according to documents revealed in a 2019 case in Massachusetts federal court.

W hen Makled was finally released around two hours after he was first detained, he asked the official if he should expect to be stopped every time he traveled abroad.

“He’s like, ‘You might be stopped next time,’” Makled said. “You might not. It depends on the agent that’s working.”

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CREATORS: Let History Guide the Court on Deportation Issue

 Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
April 22, 2025

What happens when the government violates an individual's constitutional rights? We may soon find out as the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving the federal government's deportation of noncitizens in violation of a court order and without due process of law.

The Supreme Court's response to unconstitutional conduct by law enforcement as it relates to individuals accused of a crime may serve as a guide.

In 1961, the high court created a dramatic remedy that would prevent the prosecution of an accused whose constitutional rights had been violated. The Court established the exclusionary rule, which remains controversial to this day.

In 1957, Cleveland, Ohio police officers went to the home of Dollree Mapp looking for a suspect in a criminal investigation. She refused to let the police in without a warrant.

The police left, and when they returned, they were armed with a phony warrant. Chicanery took the place of real police work. Instead of going to a judge to get a warrant, they drew up their own. After entering Mapp's home, police searched and confiscated obscene material, resulting in Mapp's arrest.

As a result of the police misconduct, the Supreme Court, in Mapp v. Ohio, provided a remedy — the exclusion of illegally obtained evidence from admission in a criminal prosecution — resulting in a dismissal of the charges.

The rationale behind the exclusionary rule was to deter police misconduct. If police intentionally circumvented their obligation to get a search warrant, or deprived an accused of due process, the penalty would be significant — the inability to use any evidence illegally obtained.

Over the last half century, the Supreme Court has whittled away at the exclusionary rule. The court has ruled that the exclusionary rule does not apply if the police obtained no advantage by their unlawful conduct, if a judge improvidently issued a warrant or if a valid warrant was illegally served.

In 2009, the assault on the exclusionary rule continued. The Supreme Court found that evidence confiscated as a result of an arrest that was the product of an expired warrant was not subject to exclusion. The court found that negligence by one police department in failing to remove a warrant did not contaminate evidence obtained by a different police department that was unaware of the invalid arrest warrant.

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court further narrowed the exclusionary rule. Police in Alabama arrested Willie Davis. After he was handcuffed and placed in the backseat of a police cruiser, Davis' car was searched. The police found a gun. They were in conformity with the law as it existed at the time the warrantless search of Davis' car was conducted.

Subsequently, the law changed, and Davis sought to have the evidence excluded. The Supreme Court refused to exclude the evidence. Justice Samuel Alito concluded that suppression of evidence as the result of a change in the law, a change that came after a lawful search, "would do nothing to deter police misconduct."

In 2016, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion in a Utah case ruling that evidence obtained from an unlawful police stop would not be excluded from court because the link between the stop and the evidence's discovery was "attenuated" by the discovery of an outstanding warrant during the stop.

Despite the Supreme Court's diminution of Mapp v. Ohio, history has looked kindly on the Warren Court and the important protections provided by the court to men and women accused of crime.

The current Supreme Court has stepped in to halt deportations to El Salvadore temporarily. The Trump administration faces possible contempt for prior deportations and specifically for the mistaken deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. History will remember what remedy the Supreme Court crafts, if any, for Garcia and the other Venezuelans deported without due process.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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