Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media with a Special Guest, Apr. 16, 2025

April 16, 2025 · The White House · 0:14:42

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What happened

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt briefed members of the media on Apr. 16, 2025, carried on the White House channel, in a briefing devoted to the deportation dispute over Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Leavitt stated the administration’s case: that Abrego Garcia is an illegal alien and MS-13 gang member who was deported to his home country, that two separate judges had found he was a member of MS-13 and that finding had never been disputed, as she stated it, and she presented Maryland court documents from May 2021 concerning a protective order, as she described their contents.

Leavitt criticized Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador that day and then introduced her special guest: Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel was, in Leavitt’s words, brutally murdered at the hands of an illegal alien in August 2023. Morin spoke to the briefing room about her daughter’s case and, as the companion White House clip of her remarks records her saying: “It feels like a part of you is being ripped out. You can’t even describe the pain.”

Why it matters

The briefing is the White House’s fullest on-record presentation of its side of the Abrego Garcia dispute at the height of the controversy - its stated judicial findings and court documents, answered in the same room by the mother of a Maryland murder victim whose case the administration cites as its border policy’s reason.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the administration’s Apr. 16, 2025 statements in the Abrego Garcia matter (the two-judges MS-13 finding as stated at this briefing) - flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated.

Sources: The White House, “Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media with a Special Guest, Apr. 16, 2025” (YouTube, Apr. 16, 2025) - official description and broadcast transcript as aired.