Trump Administration Live Updates: Lawmakers Spar Over Immigration in House Hearing
Where Things Stand
Immigration hearing: Lawmakers are sparring over immigration enforcement during a House Oversight Committee hearing, with Republicans displaying what they said were mug shots of undocumented migrants and Democrats showing headlines describing American children being caught up in President Trump’s crackdown. The three Democratic governors testifying condemned the Trump administration’s decision to deploy troops to Los Angeles over immigration protests there. Read more ›
Electric vehicles: Mr. Trump signed congressional resolutions to block California’s effort to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles, his latest attempt to reduce the power of the nation’s most populous state. The signed resolutions, which carry the force of law, are expected to draw an immediate legal challenge from California. Read more ›
Vaccine advisers: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight doctors and researchers, including two prominent critics of federal scientists and the Biden administration’s Covid vaccine policies, to replace experts he had fired from a vaccine advisory panel. Read more ›
Immigration clash: A federal judge will hear California’s request to limit the role of the military in immigration raids there. The police in Los Angeles, Seattle and other cities cleared protests on Wednesday night. Follow live updates ›
Reporting from Washington
The far-reaching domestic policy bill that Republicans recently pushed through the House would provide rich Americans with a financial lift while taking away government benefits from the poor, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday.
The analysis is the first from the budget office that lays out how Americans at different income levels would be affected by the Republican legislation, which slashes taxes and cuts spending on safety-net programs like Medicaid and food stamps. Americans would, on average, gain from the bill, according to the analysis, but the consequences would be very different for poor Americans and for rich ones.
The bottom 10 percent, for example, would overall lose government benefits worth an average of $1,559, or 3.9 percent of their current income, each year over the next decade, according to the budget office. The bottom 30 percent of Americans would all, on average, lose more benefits than they would receive from the bill. In contrast, the top 10 percent would gain an average of $12,044, a 2.3 percent annual increase to their current income.
Middle-class Americans would see smaller gains. The middle 10 percent of Americans would on average net $514 per year if the measure were enacted, an annual increase of 0.5 percent in their current income.
Overall, the richer Americans are, the larger the benefit they would receive from the legislation. That is true for the bill overall over the next decade, as well as for each individual year through 2034 as provisions in the bill phase in and out.
While stark, the budget office’s conclusion was not a surprise. Several other independent analysts had already concluded that the legislation would be regressive, meaning that its benefits would be skewed toward Americans with more income.
That is because of the nature of the agenda Republicans have pursued. In general, income tax cuts, the centerpiece of the bill, tend to provide their biggest benefits to the high-earning Americans who pay the most in taxes. The poorest Americans already often do not owe any income taxes, meaning they do not benefit from a tax cut.
At the same time, Republicans have targeted programs that help low-income Americans for cuts. Under the House-passed version of the legislation, nearly 11 million Americans are expected to lose health coverage, for example. The loss in those benefits would overwhelm the modest savings that Americans on the lower rungs of the income ladder would see from tax cuts.
Even with the cuts to safety-net programs, the legislation would still be costly, with the budget office previously estimating that it would add nearly $3 trillion to the debt over the next decade, including additional borrowing costs.
Republicans in the Senate are still working on the legislation, though the changes they are planning are not expected to alter the overall thrust of the legislation, meaning the final product is all but certain to favor rich Americans over poor ones.
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Lawmakers are taking a short break from the hearing with the three Democratic governors. There is a fundamental divide over how the two parties view immigration enforcement efforts. The Democratic governors are emphasizing that their states cooperate with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in criminal cases where the targets of deportation efforts have had their due process rights.
But Republicans have repeatedly argued that states and localities should cooperate with all enforcement efforts against undocumented immigrants. Representative Virginia Fox of Texas, questioning Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, criticized his state for not cooperating when immigrants were “illegally here and ICE comes to get them.”
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who was the Democratic nominee for vice president, is at times falling back to a point he made during 2024 campaign: that a bipartisan agreement on border security would have done more to address immigration issues than Trump’s large-scale deportation campaign.
But in the House, Republicans have largely ceded immigration policy to the Trump administration, which has used executive orders to ramp up immigration enforcement and border security.
An effort to ban any of the federal funds Congress allocates in the 2026 Pentagon Budget from being used to “operate, maintain or retrofit” the Boeing 747 jetliner that was gifted from the government of Qatar failed in a vote along party lines in the House Appropriations Committee.
The vote’s failure highlights the reluctance of the Republican-led House to exercise its oversight authority when it comes to interactions with the Trump White House. Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the panel, said it was an “embarrassment” that the committee had to even consider whether or not the president should be allowed to accept such a gift.
Laurel Rosenhall and Lisa Friedman
Laurel Rosenhall reported from Sacramento and Lisa Friedman reported from Washington
President Trump signed joint resolutions of Congress on Thursday that block California’s effort to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles, his latest attempt to reduce the power of the nation’s most populous state.
The Republican-led Congress passed the resolutions in May to reverse the Biden administration’s approval of California’s electric vehicle efforts. When signed by the president, joint resolutions revoking federal rules carry the force of law and are not subject to judicial review.
Even so, the move is expected to draw an immediate legal challenge from California, as well as an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom directing state officials to find another path that would move the state’s drivers toward electric vehicles and encourage companies to make them.
Mr. Trump signed the resolutions at a time when he was battling California on several fronts, most notably in a dispute over immigration enforcement, in which the president has sent National Guard and Marine troops to Southern California in an extraordinary use of military force.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump took aim at California’s longstanding authority under the federal Clean Air Act of 1970 to set pollution standards for the state that are more strict than federal limits, and at Governor Newsom’s ambition to fight climate change with an aggressive transition to electric vehicles. Repealing California’s automobile policy is central to Mr. Trump’s agenda of bolstering the production and use of fossil fuels in the United States, while eliminating policies that promote renewable energy and reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr. Trump’s action reversed a Biden administration decision that allowed the state to require that electric vehicles make up a progressively larger share of new vehicles sold in California until 2035, when the state would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars entirely.
Speaking in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Trump called the California plan a “disaster” and said it “would effectively abolish the internal combustion engine, which most people prefer.”
Republican lawmakers, automobile and trucking industry leaders and oil industry executives including John B. Hess, chief executive of the Hess Corporation, were in attendance. California’s policy promoting electric vehicles would have been a major blow to the oil and gas industry.
Anticipating the president’s action, California leaders plan a two-part response later on Thursday, state officials said. Rob Bonta, the state attorney general, has said he would file a lawsuit asking a federal judge to overturn the resolutions. And Mr. Newsom intends to direct his administration to develop new rules that encourage the use of electric vehicles and reward car manufacturers who agree to follow California’s plan to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles.
“Trump’s all-out assault on California continues, and this time he’s destroying our clean air and America’s global competitiveness in the process,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement.
Republican lawmakers, automakers and the fossil fuel industry applauded Mr. Trump’s action.
“Everyone agreed these E.V. sales mandates were never achievable and wildly unrealistic,” said John Bozzella, chief executive of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents major automakers. “Customers don’t want the government telling them what kind of car to buy,” he said.
For more than 50 years, the Clean Air Act has allowed California to set pollution standards that are stricter than federal rules, as long as the state obtains waivers for them from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The resolutions Mr. Trump signed on Thursday also revoke waivers for two other California clean-air policies. One blocks California from requiring that half of all new trucks sold in the state be electric by 2035. Another stops the state from putting limits on allowable emissions of nitrogen oxide from cars and trucks. Those emissions can form smog and contribute to respiratory problems like asthma.
Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Associations, said that ending California’s electric truck policy was “common sense,” because the policy would have forced long-haul trucks and others to transition away from diesel power far faster than the existing infrastructure for electric vehicles could support.
“We looked at this as a mad dash to zero,” Mr. Spear said.
California’s lawsuit is expected to challenge the legality of all three resolutions, which were the first ever passed by Congress to revoke California’s Clean Air Act waivers.
The state, with nearly 40 million residents, has enormous market power on its own, and 11 other states had intended to follow California’s electric vehicles plan. Together, they account for about 40 percent of the U.S. auto market. Manufacturers do not want to create two separate fleets, one for those states and one for states that still allow unlimited sales of gasoline-powered vehicles, so California’s policy would have had an impact nationwide.
Republicans have come to resent California’s market influence, and they have long hoped to repeal California’s ability to shape how consumer products are made and sold.
The lawsuit being prepared by California is expected to argue that the federal revocation of California’s waivers will harm public health and reduce economic benefits created by the state’s clean-car plan. Pollution from gasoline-powered cars has been linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems and cancer, Mr. Bonta said, and the plan to phase them out has spurred technological innovations that have boosted California’s economy.
“We are suing to stop this latest illegal action by a president who is a wholly owned subsidiary of big polluters,” Mr. Newsom said.
The crux of the lawsuit is expected to be an allegation that Congress illegally used the Congressional Review Act to pass the resolutions that Mr. Trump signed. The 1996 act allows lawmakers to overturn rules that have been recently approved by the executive branch with a simple majority vote. Republicans asserted that the act also allowed Congress to overturn the E.P.A. waivers.
The Senate passed the resolutions over the objections of the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian and an independent watchdog, which both had ruled that lawmakers lacked the legal authority to revoke the waivers.
“This is a completely improper use of the Congressional Review Act,” Mr. Bonta said in an interview. “The Congressional Review Act applies to rules, not to waivers. It’s never been applied to any waiver, ever.”
But the act includes a provision that could stymie California’s lawsuit, because it prohibits judicial review of actions passed under the act.
California’s ability to set tough emissions standards dates back to 1970, when heavy smog clouded the skies of Los Angeles. Since then, the state has received dozens of waivers allowing a range of policies to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Air quality has improved, but remains poor in some regions, particularly in the Central Valley. State leaders see the transition to electric cars as a tool to improve it.
California’s ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars did not apply to used vehicles, so it would not have completely eliminated them from the roads. But voter concerns about the state’s high cost of living gave Republicans and some Democrats reason to object to California’s plan, because electric vehicles tend to cost more than comparable gasoline-powered models.
The executive order that Mr. Newsom plans to sign today will direct the California Air Resources Board to come up with new ways to encourage electric vehicle use and reduce emissions, according to the governor’s office. Under it, the state would prioritize funding for E.V. rebates and will seek to develop new incentive programs. And it would steer state agencies to purchase fleet vehicles from manufacturers who agree to phase out new gasoline-powered cars.
“I’m signing an executive order to keep California on track with our world-leading transition to cleaner cars,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTAs is often the case with politically contentious issues, this immigration hearing feels like it might as well be two separate ones. Republicans are hammering Democratic governors over immigration, portraying them as encouraging sanctuary policies that have fostered violent crime, even as all three governors have said crime in their states is down.
Democrats, meanwhile, have been more focused on what they portray as the Trump administration’s abuses of power, pointing to the deployment of troops to California and deportations of undocumented immigrants without due process.
The governors are facing high-profile confrontations with representatives from their states. Though Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 Republican, is not on the Oversight Committee, he was given special dispensation to speak, offering a minutes-long harangue against Walz, who he argued turned “Minnesota into a magnet for illegals.”
President Trump once again attacked Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell, urging him to lower interest rates while insisting that inflation is under control. The president mused aloud about the merits of a one or two point rate cut, stressing it would help make it less expensive to service the nation’s debt.
“If you think there’s inflation, let’s find out,” Trump said he told Powell during a meeting at the White House recently. “Let’s say there was inflation in a year from now. Raise your rates. I don’t mind.”
Otherwise, Trump disputed that “it would be so bad” if he fired Powell, though the president said he did not plan to do so.
The far-reaching domestic policy bill that Republicans recently passed in the House would provide rich Americans with a financial lift while taking away government benefits from poor Americans, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Thursday.
Overall, the richer an American is, the larger benefit they would receive from the legislation.
The bottom 10 percent of Americans, for example, would overall lose government benefits worth an average of $1,559, or roughly 4 percent of their current income, each year over the next 10 years, according to the budget office. The top 10 percent of Americans, meanwhile, would gain an average of $12,044, a 2.3 percent annual increase to their current income.
Representative Seth Moulton pointedly asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a hearing about his use of the private messaging app Signal to transmit classified details of impending U.S. Navy attacks on Houthis in Yemen in March, and whether he would hold himself accountable if a pending report from the Defense Department’s inspector general finds wrongdoing. “You say accountability is back,” Moulton asked after Hegseth dodged his questions about whether that information was classified, “I’m just asking if that applies to you.”
Moulton also asked the defense secretary how many admirals and generals he had fired since taking office. When Hegseth indicated that he did not know, Moulton said that number was eight, and asked for the secretary’s rationale. Hegseth replied by saying that all of those fired serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States. “You can’t say why you fired any of them?” Moulton asked as his time expired.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTOn Capitol Hill this morning there is a flurry of activity related to next year’s budget to run the Defense Department. The House Appropriations Committee is marking up their $831.5 billion spending plan for the Pentagon, despite the White House failing to submit a detail funding request, a step typically completed before congressional budgeting begins.
The bill has already drawn criticism from defense hawks who lament that it keeps funding levels flat — denying the increase many have sought to match the pace of inflation and cost of living hikes. Some Republicans contend that the budget plan should be viewed alongside a separate reconciliation plan working through Congress that would add an addition $150 billion to the Pentagon’s budget, though not all Republicans are satisfied by that argument.
Meanwhile at a separate hearing, Secretary Pete Hegseth is testifying before the House Armed Services Committee. Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the panel, condemned the administration for what he said was an “unacceptable” and “historic delay.”
“We’re here today to hear from the Department of Defense about the FY26 Budget Request,” Rogers said with a bewildered expression as he began the hearing. “Unfortunately we have not received the FY26 budget.”
A closely watched exchange just took place as Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a possible gubernatorial contender, questioned Gov. Kathy Hochul. Stefanik ran through a list of violent crimes committed by undocumented people in New York State, including a case in which a woman was burned alive. Hochul struggled to get a word in to defend the state’s policies.
In the hearing with Democratic governors, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, chair of the Oversight Committee, tried to pressure them into criticizing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s immigration policy. Then he pivoted to asking Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, about his views of Biden’s mental and physical decline.
“I was probably more concerned with my own debate performance than President Biden’s,” Walz responded.
The Justice Department is suing New York State over a 2020 law that blocks federal immigration enforcement officials from arresting people when they show up for court hearings, a tactic that the Trump administration has used widely. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the law, signed by Andrew Cuomo, who was then the governor, violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. Its legislative sponsors have argued that it is essential to ensure fundamental due process rights, and that the practice of ambushing immigrants makes a mockery of judicial proceedings.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTIn response to a line of questions from Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, as to whether the Pentagon is planning to use military force to take Panama and Greenland as President Trump has threatened, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth repeatedly refused to answer directly. “Any contingency you need, we got it,” Hegseth said in the hearing. “We are in the planning business.”
In a hearing on Capitol Hill on the fiscal year 2026 defense budget, Rep. Mike Rogers, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said he supports an increase in U.S. defense spending to reach 5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, and said he thinks that is possible by the end of President Trump’s current term. That would more than double the nearly trillion-dollar defense budget, as defense spending in 2024 was 2.4 percent of G.D.P., according to Pentagon data.
Opening statements in the hearing are finishing up. All three Democratic governors have blasted President Trump for sending troops to Los Angeles. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York opened with a stinging rebuke: “As we speak, an American city has been militarized over the objections of their governor. At the outset, I just want to say that this is a clear abuse of power and nothing short of an extraordinary assault on our American values.”
Democrats brought props to the hearing too — posters showing news headlines of instances in which ICE has deported young children who are U.S. citizens. In heated opening remarks, Rep. Stephen Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts, compared the administration’s approach to immigration enforcement to the tactics of the Gestapo. “The Trump administration is putting extremism, cruelty and chaos over protecting kids and families,” Lynch said. “Trump isn’t focused on getting criminals off the streets; he’s terrorizing our communities to fulfill deportation quotas.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTRep. James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, is kicking off the hearing with a story about a young woman killed by a drunk driver who was undocumented. Behind him, large posters show the mug shots of undocumented immigrants with descriptions of violent crimes. The story and props are part of the Republican Party’s push to frame the immigration debate as one about crime, instead of civil rights.
“I invited these governors here today because as the chief executives of their states, they willfully ignore federal law, shield illegal aliens and pass the cost of free services onto their hard-working taxpayers,” Comer said.
The hearing room where three Democratic governors — Tim Walz of Minnesota, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Kathy Hochul of New York — are expected to face a lengthy grilling over immigration policy is beginning to fill up. The hearing before the House Oversight Committee begins at 10 a.m.
After Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told reporters that he had been “uninvited” to an annual White House picnic over his opposition to the sweeping bill that would advance President Trump’s policy agenda, the president said on his social media platform that the senator was “of course” welcome.
Trump has in recent weeks been lashing out at Paul, a fiscal hawk who has been pushing for larger spending cuts, as he presses for quick action on a bill that would expand tax cuts, reduce spending on programs like Medicaid and boost spending on the military, border security and immigration enforcement.
Congressional Republicans on Thursday questioned three Democratic governors about their states’ immigration policies, amplifying a partisan clash as President Trump challenges California officials and anti-deportation protests spread across the country.
The political divide was evident immediately. All three governors — Tim Walz of Minnesota, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Kathy Hochul of New York — used part of their testimony to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to condemn the Trump administration for deploying troops to Los Angeles against the wishes of local officials.
“As we speak, an American city has been militarized over the objections of their governor,” Ms. Hochul said in her opening statement. “At the outset, I just want to say that this is a clear abuse of power and nothing short of an extraordinary assault on our American values.”
Throughout the contentious hearing, Republicans focused intently on undocumented immigrants whom the authorities have accused of violent crimes, extrapolating from individual cases to frame the immigration debate as one about lawlessness and criminality.
They tried to needle Democratic governors over policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities or protect undocumented immigrants against detention or deportation.
”Let me be clear: sanctuary policies don’t protect Americans,” Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee said. “They protect criminal illegal aliens.”
But Democrats, who remain divided over their party’s approach to immigration enforcement, centered their remarks on Mr. Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles and what they characterized as an overzealous crackdown on immigrants, actions they portrayed as an abuse of presidential power.
Thursday’s hearing was scheduled long before the unrest in Los Angeles, which began last week with protests over workplace raids and escalated after the Trump administration sent Marines and National Guard troops to the city. And it reflected a larger Republican effort to vilify Democratic officials over immigration policies that Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress claim shield criminals.
During his campaign last year, Mr. Trump harnessed voters’ anxieties over immigration and crime for political gains, broadly depicted undocumented immigrants as violent and blaming Democrats for encouraging a “migrant crime wave” that was contradicted by statistics.
Earlier this year, the president issued executive orders targeting so-called sanctuary cities, jurisdictions that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities or have policies explicitly intended to protect undocumented immigrants against detention or deportation. One order directs the withholding of federal funds from cities and counties that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Republicans in Congress also have advanced bills that have taken aim at those states and localities. And Mr. Comer has promised to use the powers of his committee — the House’s principal investigative panel and one of its most confrontational — as part of that effort.
The panel is stacked with vocal ideologues, and though immigration was the hearing’s main focus, it often veered off-topic as lawmakers tried to rack up political points.
Mr. Comer’s summoning of the three Democratic governors seemed designed to generate maximum political impact. Both Mr. Walz and Mr. Pritzker are being floated as potential 2028 presidential contenders and have become high-profile representatives of their party’s fight against Mr. Trump.
Early in the hearing, Mr. Comer pressed Mr. Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee last year, over his knowledge of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s mental and physical state at the end of his term. “I was probably more concerned with my own debate performance than President Biden’s,” Mr. Walz responded.
Representative Brandon Gill of Texas took aim at Mr. Pritzker on a host of issues that Republicans are using to exploit discontent with Democrats. He pressed him on his stance on Hamas and on transgender issues, asking him whether he believed that men should use women’s restrooms.
Mr. Pritzker did not take the bait. “So you’re admitting this is just a political circus?” he asked, before seeking to turn the discussion back to immigration.
The governor has sought to turn Illinois into a “firewall” against Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts, signing some of the nation’s most robust legislation in defiance of federal immigration enforcement.
On Thursday, he emphasized that Illinois would “not participate in abuses of power” or “violate court orders” at the behest of federal immigration officials.
Mr. Walz maintained that Minnesota is not a “sanctuary state,” noting that its legislature has not passed any laws designed to protect undocumented people. But he said that the state respects city and county decisions on how much to coordinate with federal immigration officials.
He defended previous comments comparing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to the Gestapo, saying that he stood for the rule of law, which included due process. “The Constitution is not an inconvenience,” he said.
Ms. Hochul had a slightly different goal for the hearing. After initially clashing with Mr. Trump over congestion pricing, the brash president and unassuming governor have built something of a rapport that she has striven to preserve. In just the past month, Mr. Trump reversed course to approve a wind farm crucial to the state’s climate goals, and Ms. Hochul signaled openness to a new gas pipeline that the president has pushed for.
But the relationship remains a high-wire act for Ms. Hochul, who is seeking re-election next year. Two House Republicans, Representatives Mike Lawler and Elise Stefanik, are weighing running against her.
Ms. Stefanik, who is not on the Oversight Committee but was given special dispensation to question Ms. Hochul, was among the first to barrage Ms. Hochul with a series of pointed questions about violent crimes that occurred in New York. She peppered Ms. Hochul with the details of attacks that Ms. Stefanik said were committed by undocumented people shielded by New York’s immigration laws.
Ms. Hochul acknowledged that she did not know specific details and struggled to get a word in edgewise, but she repeated that New York cooperated with I.C.E. on criminal matters.
There is some irony to House Republican’s efforts to portray her Ms. Hochul an open-borders radical. A centrist from Buffalo, Ms. Hochul garnered some of the first headlines of her career in 2007, when as a county clerk she refused to provide driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. And while her stance has shifted — her prepared testimony for the committee include a line on the importance of everyone being able to obtain a license — she has remained, rhetorically at least, more open to working with federal immigration officials than other Democrats in her state.
“Someone breaks the law, I’ll be the first one to call up I.C.E. and say, ‘Get them out of here,’” she told reporters late last year.
But she faltered in efforts to speak over the shouted questions of House Republicans to defend New York’s practice of cooperating with I.C.E. only in instances when there is a criminal investigation.
All three governors repeatedly rejected the premise that state laws were to blame for the nation’s immigration system, which all agreed was broken.
Mr. Walz sought to find common ground, with a plea: “We need to work together. No one here wants to hear these horrific stories, but we have a job to do, and we don’t have unlimited resources. Equating that with not doing ICE’s job doesn’t mean we’re not cooperating.”
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Defense lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant who was recently brought back to the United States to face a federal indictment after being wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador, said in court papers on Wednesday that he should remain free from custody as he awaits trial.
The papers, filed in Federal District Court in Nashville, amounted to the opening salvo of efforts by the defense lawyers to challenge the charges that were filed last week against Mr. Abrego Garcia.
“With no legal process whatsoever, the United States government illegally detained and deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia and shipped him to the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) in El Salvador, one of the most violent, inhumane prisons in the world,” the lawyers wrote.
“The government now asks this court to detain him further,” they went on, asking Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., who is handling the criminal case, to deny the request. Judge Crenshaw is set to hold a hearing on Friday to arraign Mr. Abrego Garcia and to hear arguments about whether to detain him before the trial.
Mr. Abrego Garcia, a metalworker who was living in Maryland when he was arrested on March 12 and summarily deported three days later to El Salvador, had for weeks been trying through lawyers representing him in a separate civil case to enforce a court order instructing the Trump administration to take active measures toward securing his freedom.
But after the administration repeatedly sought to sidestep and delay complying with that order, the Justice Department abruptly changed course. Top department officials announced on Friday that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been brought back to the United States to stand trial on charges of taking part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle thousands of undocumented immigrants across the country as a member of the violent street gang MS-13.
In two written requests to Judge Crenshaw to keep Mr. Abrego Garcia locked up as his criminal case moved forward, federal prosecutors argued that he presented a “serious risk” of flight because of the possibility that he or members of MS-13 might intimidate some of the government’s witnesses.
The prosecutors also argued that he might flee because he faced a lengthy sentence if convicted and could confront the possibility of being deported again.
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s defense lawyers pushed back against those claims in several ways. Chief among them, they struck at the heart of the Justice Department’s indictment by denying what they described as “the government’s baseless gang-affiliation allegations.”
The defense lawyers also rejected the idea that their client was a flight risk, telling Judge Crenshaw that he had no prior felony convictions or any history of evading arrest. They noted further that the sentence he was likely to face if found guilty was relatively modest.
As for the claim that Mr. Abrego Garcia might fear being deported again, the defense lawyers argued that because he had just been held in the “notoriously inhuman” CECOT prison, he actually had an increased chance of obtaining asylum protections against being sent back to El Salvador.
According to the indictment, the case against Mr. Abrego Garcia reached back to Nov. 30, 2022, when he was stopped for speeding by the Tennessee Highway Patrol on Interstate 40, in Putnam County. Officers determined that the Chevrolet Suburban he was driving had been altered with “an aftermarket third row of seats designed to carry additional passengers,” the indictment said.
It also noted that there were “nine Hispanic males packed into the S.U.V.”
Prosecutors say that Mr. Abrego Garcia told the officers that he and his passengers had been in St. Louis for the previous two weeks doing construction work. But the indictment alleged that he was lying and that a subsequent investigation showed that cellphone and license plate reader data indicated he had been in Texas that morning and nowhere near St. Louis for the preceding weeks.
Those assertions, however, appeared to be contradicted by a summary of the initial police report that was released by the Department of Homeland Security in April as the Trump administration was seeking to depict Mr. Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 member. The summary notes that when he was stopped by the police, he clearly told officers that he was coming from Texas and had merely passed through St. Louis.
Top officials in the Justice Department have said they believe that the initial order to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from El Salvador, issued in April by Judge Paula Xinis, who is handling the civil case, was rendered moot after officials successfully brought him back to the United States to face criminal charges.
In fact, shortly after the charges were unsealed, lawyers for the department asked Judge Xinis, who sits in Federal District Court in Maryland, to put all of the proceedings in the civil case on hold as they prepared a motion to dismiss it altogether.
But lawyers handling the civil case for Mr. Abrego Garcia believe that it should be allowed to continue.
Those lawyers were in fact poised to file a new motion in the civil case on Wednesday night, asking the judge to hold administration officials in contempt of court for what they have called “an elaborate, all-of-government effort to defy court orders.”
Reporting from Washington
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight doctors and researchers, including four who have spoken out against vaccination in some way, to replace roughly half the members he fired from an expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mr. Kennedy made the announcement Wednesday on the social media platform X, two days after he fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Arriving at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for a performance of “Les Misérables” that President Trump also attended, the health secretary told reporters that the firings were “a long time coming.”
Mr. Kennedy said on X that his picks included “highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians.” In a post on X late Tuesday night, a day after he removed the panel members, Mr. Kennedy promised he would not appoint “ideological anti-vaxxers.”
After the new list was announced, infectious disease and vaccine experts immediately accused the health secretary of breaking his word. When Mr. Kennedy fired the entire committee, known as the A.C.I.P., he cited financial conflicts of interest and said a clean sweep was necessary to restore public trust in vaccination.
But a White House official and a person close to Mr. Kennedy said on Tuesday that ideology was also at work. In addition to supposed financial conflicts, Mr. Kennedy was concerned that all of the members had been appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and that some had donated to Democrats. The disclosure was shocking to public health leaders, who say that scientific advisers are chosen for their expertise, without consideration of party affiliation.
“The biggest hit here is the irony of him, RFK, talking about regaining the public’s trust,” said Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who has served as a committee member and has frequently tangled with Mr. Kennedy.
“What he just did was, he lost the trust of the medical community,” Dr. Offit added, “so much so that people are thinking, ‘Should we try and create our own A.C.I.P., our own vaccine advisory committee?’ Because you can’t trust this one.”
The eight members Mr. Kennedy named — seven men and one woman — have varied credentials. All are either medical doctors or have doctorates. They include a psychiatrist; a biostatistician; an expert in health care analytics; a biochemist; a pediatrician; an emergency medical doctor; a public health and critical care nurse; and an obstetrician.
Richard H. Hughes IV, who teaches vaccine law at George Washington University Law School, called out one of the new committee members — Dr. Cody Meissner — as a “legitimate vaccinologist.” Dr. Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth, has previously held advisory roles both with the C.D.C. and the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Offit and other experts praised Dr. Meissner for his depth of knowledge about vaccines.
Mr. Hughes said three of the new members are “legitimate physicians” who have “no discernible expertise” in immunology or vaccines. But he characterized the remaining four as “Covid-19 deniers, skeptics and outright anti-vaccine individuals.”
By far the most contentious pick, and the one with the highest profile, is Dr. Robert Malone. He played an early role in mRNA research and has claimed to be the inventor of the technology. He became a right-wing star after a 2021 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that exposed both him and Mr. Rogan to criticism that they had spread misinformation. Dr. Malone was a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s Covid response.
“Malone has a well-documented history of promoting conspiracy theories and unproven treatment like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19,” said Dr. Jeffrey D. Klausner, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the University of Southern California.
Dr. Klausner, who is also a neighbor of Mr. Kennedy’s in Los Angeles and has spoken with the health secretary about possible candidates for advisory committees, said he was “disappointed” in Dr. Malone’s appointment, which he said was likely “a political move to maintain support of some Americans and demonstrate diversity, equity and inclusivity.”
Martin Kulldorff, a Swedish biostatistician and former Harvard professor, has been generally supportive of vaccines, and has advised the C.D.C. on vaccine safety. But he opposed Covid vaccine mandates and Covid vaccination for children, and became caught up in pandemic politics in 2020 as a lead author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a document that opposed lockdowns.
The declaration, whose lead authors also included Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the current director of the National Institutes of Health, garnered nearly one million signatures from more than 40 countries. Dr. Meissner, the new A.C.I.P. member, was an early signer. But it drew intense backlash from Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and other public health leaders, who branded it dangerous.
Dr. Francis S. Collins, the N.I.H. director at the time, called the authors “fringe epidemiologists.”
Dr. Kulldorff was later fired from his hospital, Mass General Brigham, and from Harvard, in a dispute over the hospital’s requirement for staff to be vaccinated against Covid-19. He has said that he has an immune deficiency, which made him wary of the Covid shot, and that he already had natural immunity from a previous infection.
While Dr. Malone and Dr. Kulldorff are the best known of the new members, two other picks — Retsef Levi and Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse — are also likely to come under scrutiny from public health leaders.
Dr. Levi, an expert in analytics, risk management and health systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has criticized school closures and Covid lockdowns, and warned against mRNA vaccines.
In a 2023 post on X, he wrote, “The evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people.” He has said the evidence for vaccinating against Covid-19 in pregnancy “is particularly thin.”
After Mr. Kennedy’s announcement, Dr. Levi said on Wednesday on X that he was “honored with this opportunity and humbled by the responsibility” to serve on the panel.
Dr. Pebsworth, who has a Ph.D. in public health, serves on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, founded in 1982 to promote awareness of the risks of vaccination. She has served as a consumer representative to an expert panel that advises the F.D.A. on vaccination and has advised the government in other capacities.
In its early years, the vaccine information center worked with federal authorities to promote vaccine safety, and to create a system to address vaccine injuries. But today, advocates for vaccination consider it an anti-vaccine group.
Dr. Pebsworth’s bio on the center’s website says she is the parent of a vaccine-injured child. “Her son — her only child — experienced serious, long-term health problems following receipt of seven live virus and killed bacterial vaccines administered during his 15-month well-baby visit, which sparked her interest in vaccine safety research and policymaking, and chronic illness and disability in children,” the site says.
It is unclear how the committee will move forward with an entirely new membership. Its next meeting is set for later this month. Committee members had expected to discuss, among other things, a change in the vaccination schedule for the human papillomavirus vaccine, but it does not appear as though there is an agenda on the committee’s website.
“This is a very differently constituted committee than what we’ve had before,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician and professor at Stanford University who was among the members fired on Monday. She predicted it would be “very difficult to get through the agenda in a smooth way,” given that the new panel will have only two weeks to prepare.
Javier C. Hernández and Apoorva Mandavilli contributed reporting,
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