Homeland Security Doxxing Abrego Garcia's Wife Was No Accident

This is the misuse of private documents to harass and intimidate victims and whistleblowers.

If you have not read my piece about how I expected the U.S. government to start having frequent accidents, I recommend reading that now because this is a great example. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is the Maryland father without a criminal record who was trafficked to the notorious El Salvador prison camp in keeping with Trump’s anti-immigrant scapegoating agenda. The Department of Homeland Security recently released a protective order application by Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife against him. In so doing, they forced her and the children into hiding because they just so happened to publicize this sensitive document with her address on it amidst her public advocacy for her husband’s release. I recognized this tactic right away, and I predicted it, so let me explain why I think the state did this and what it means so you will not fall for this dirty trick.

Here’s a quick list of the purposes releasing this document serves:

1. Dehumanization of victims, redefinition as "criminals,” and justification of human rights abuses.

2. Casting Trump as a savior and protector, especially of women.

3. Intimidating advocates, whistleblowers, and rescuers (i.e., anyone who tries to protect targeted groups and victims of the regime).

For starters, in order to normalize and justify sending people to concentration camps, fascists must first dehumanize and vilify them. Historically, this has included comparing people (Jews, Roma, Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Tutsis, Native Americans, etc.) to various dangerous animals such as snakes or pests like cockroaches. It should have raised everyone’s eyebrows and thrown the world into a state of vigilant emergency response when Trump said, “I will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country.” If you want to read another red flag of an article from conservative propaganda mouthpiece National Review arguing in favor of this kind of dehumanizing language by trying to make a false equivalency between “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” and calling someone a bed bug, here’s that.

Genocide and fascism also involve redefining the targeted population as criminals or persecuting people already criminalized. We should expect to see the Trump administration criminalizing a lot of marginalized groups, dissenters, and rescuers in order to justify sending them to concentration camps too. See my 2023 piece predicting this and comparing it to Frederick Douglass’ historic 4th of July speech here. Consider, for example, the concerted effort to redefine anti-genocide protesters and journalists as terrorist accomplices. It is noteworthy that the name of the concentration camp in El Salvador is called: “Terrorism Confinement Center.” I predict the U.S. will soon incarcerate a lot of supposed terrorists, or “enemies of the people” as Trump once called them, not because the persecuted are guilty, but because the persecutors need an excuse to punish the innocent.

I think of this prescient clip from Andor Season 1 Episode 7 often:

I want to emphasize that the vast majority of the supposed “criminals” deported to El Salvador had no criminal record or convictions, and they were denied due process. That being said, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a public face to raise awareness about those victims of wrongful imprisonment probably because his family was publicly advocating for him and he seemed relatable. We live in a world where, in terms of public relations and image management, perpetrators get to be "complicated" and still be cast as victims (particularly when using DARVO), and victims have to be “perfect” to be viewed as victims. This is challenging for social movements that need a public face to humanize victims because a lot of people who are victimized are imperfect. Trauma or other factors that make victims vulnerable and marginalized can make them less relatable and more complicated, which should make their claims of victimization more plausible if you understand power dynamics, not less. Sadly, that is not how the public sees it or how perpetrators present it.

The U.S. government, in this case, clearly wants to recast Abrego Garcia as an abuser to diminish his credible claim of persecution and to boost Trump’s image. When a victim is imperfect, it is easy for the people doing the persecuting to launch a smear campaign, which is a textbook abuse tactic and apparently popular crisis public relations play. Although it contradicts the earlier White House court argument that imprisoning Abrego Garcia was an “administrative error,” implying that Abrego Garcia is a domestic abuser is meant to justify his imprisonment. The public relations tactic is to craft a false narrative, which you can watch Pam Bondi deliver at this link, to instill a public perception that Abrego Garcia’s imprisonment protects victims of domestic violence. Casting Trump as some wonderful women’s rights advocate and protector of women from violence is laughable at best given Trump’s record on women’s rights, and conviction for sexual assault. DOGE would be funding anti-violence programs not cutting them as “waste” if Trump cared about violence against women at all.

Casting Abrego Garcias as an abuser can make Americans think trafficking Abrego Garcia and others to prison is o.k., good, and normal, but they could have accomplished casting him as an abuser by just releasing the protective order application without endangering his family through doxxing. Why did they release the protective order application with the family’s address on it? Are these people just so bad at their jobs that they do not know how to protect private data?

The state loves to deny journalists and members of the public access to public records that actually are in the public interest to be released, and their favorite excuses include “confidentiality” and “privacy.” It is hard to imagine a document more sensitive than a protective order sought by an ordinary citizen for alleged domestic violence, or a piece of information more private and confidential than the address of the victim who is publicly advocating for their vulnerable husband’s rights. It seems odd that “confidential personnel records” and “privacy” excuses only seem to apply when it comes to protecting state-sponsored perpetrators from sunlight and public scrutiny. I think the state knew that releasing Abrego Garcia’s family’s address would intimidate and scare them. The message to them and all of us is: “Anything you have given the government with your private information on it can be used against you, and you will not be safe.”

Now, I contend that you can really tell a lot about the state when you examine its P.R. Here is the very offensive announcement publicizing the Department of Homeland Security report as “bombshell” using a popular clickbait buzz word. If you think that the supposed investigators writing that report did not have a foregone conclusion, think again. The rhetorical fallacy for manufacturing evidence to support false charges or a predetermined outcome is the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy wherein the person shoots first and draws the target around the bullet hole. They already metaphorically shot Abrego Garcia when they put him in a foreign prison without a trial, so now they have to make it look like they hit the target. With aim like this, I hate to think what will happen if several states bring back literal firing squads.

It doesn't matter if Abrego Garcia had a protective order against him or not, which he didn't, as he still wouldn’t deserve to be sent to a foreign torture camp if he did. It doesn't matter if he's a citizen or not, same reason. This is the misuse of private documents to harass and intimidate victims and whistleblowers. What it should tell you is that rule of law and state law enforcement infrastructure is being undermined wherever it is supposed to protect vulnerable people and victims of the state, and weaponized when the state seeks to protect itself from accountability or its reputation from defilement. This is the part where the state becomes the oppressor. Stay focused, and make sure you remember who the real criminals are.