Fox News star Jesse Watters backed the Trump administration’s claim that an illegally deported Maryland man is a dangerous terrorist, arguing on Tuesday night that Kilmar Abrego Garcia wearing a Chicago Bulls hat “means you’re MS-13” and you “hang around with high-ranking gangsters.”
Watters also mocked the assertion that Abrego Garcia first fled El Salvador as a teenager because of threats of violence to his family’s business, claiming it was ridiculous to believe that he initially migrated to the United States because of a “tortilla blood vendetta.”
The right-wing host’s defense of the administration’s refusal to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States after shipping him to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador comes as a federal judge said that lawyers for Abrego Garcia can depose Trump officials to determine their compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling to “facilitate” his return.
“Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments,” Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis told the administration’s legal team on Tuesday.
Even though the administration originally acknowledged that Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported due to an “administrative error,” the president’s top officials have since argued publicly that the Maryland father is actually an MS-13 gang leader who was involved in “human trafficking” — a claim they have yet to make in court. Additionally, when pressed to provide the evidence to back these claims, which senior officials have said was gathered through “intelligence,” the administration has demurred.
“We’re not going to give out our national security documents every time a terrorist denies they are a terrorist,” Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told ABC News on Tuesday. “That would be insane.”
With the White House threatening a full-blown constitutional crisis by ignoring a Supreme Court ruling, Watters decided to carry the administration’s water on Tuesday night by parroting their talking points on Abrego Garcia.
“Garcia is a Bulls fan, but he’s from El Salvador and he lives in Maryland, not Chicago,” the primetime host declared. “The Bulls lost 60 games in 2019, so why the hat? Can Garcia name anyone on the team? Anyone on any Bulls team besides Jordan?”
Watters was referencing the arrest of Abrego Garcia in 2019 outside of a Home Depot for loitering alongside three other immigrants, which resulted in an allegation that he was a member of the MS-13 gang. This resulted in him being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which began removal proceedings against him because he had illegally entered the country.
However, an immigration judge eventually dismissed the claim that he was part of MS-13 and granted his “withholding of removal” request based on his “well-founded” fear of violence and persecution if returned to El Salvador. During his initial 2019 detention, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued that the only evidence of his gang affiliation was that “he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique.” The Western clique, however, operates out of New York, where Abrego Garcia has never lived.
“The officer who formally attested to Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang affiliations was suspended from the force shortly after he arrested him. He was accused of providing confidential information about an ongoing police investigation to a sex worker whom he paid for sex one year earlier,” The Independent’s Alex Woodward reported this week.
“Everyone from El Salvador knows what it means,” Watters continued on Tuesday night. “When you wear a Bulls hat, it means you’re MS-13. When you’re in Compton, you don’t accidentally wear red and say: ‘Oh, I didn’t know red was Bloods.’ If you’re a Latin American illegal alien in Maryland, you don’t accidentally wear Chicago Bulls gear and hang around with high-ranking gangsters from MS-13.”
On top of that, the Trump-boosting Fox News host also ridiculed the notion that Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador because his family’s pupusa shop had been shaken down by local gang members, resulting in increasing threats of violence. Since moving to the United States, Abrego Garcia has gotten married to an American citizen, with whom he shares a five-year-old child and has raised her two other children from another relationship.
“This is the reason he had to break into the country,” Watters sneered. “Are you ready? A local gang in El Salvador was shaking down his grandma’s tortilla shop, and his lawyers say if he gets sent back to El Salvador, he’s a dead man.”
He concluded: “It’s a tortilla blood vendetta. Seriously? So who are Garcia’s attorneys who managed to get their client a hearing in the Supreme Court?”
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