The Center for American Rights — the right-wing organization that has fueled FCC Chairman Brendan Carr‘s quest to investigate ABC, NBC and CBS over alleged “news distortion” for broadcasts tied to the 2024 U.S. presidential election — has just filed another formal complaint with the Commission.
This time, CAR wants Carr to investigate the trio of networks “for deliberately misleading the American public” about an individual widely reported as being wrongly deported and held in an El Salvador detention facility.
The organization chaired by Pat Hughes seeks to paint coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia across ABC, NBC and CBS as faulty.
The action comes as Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida, Robert Garcia of California, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine E. Dexter of Oregon — all Democrats — arrived in El Salvador seeking the release of Garcia. Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, had previously flown to the Central American nation in an attempt to release him.
Major news organizations including The New York Times have reported that Mr. Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported.
As the New York Times sees it, El Salvador-born Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland with his wife and three children. In March, he was detained and then deported to El Salvador with upward of 200 other detainees. The U.S. government accused all, including Mr. Abrego Garcia, of having ties to the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs; both have wreaked havoc across the Americas, and are tied to particularly violent narcotrafico incidents.
It is established that Mr. Abrego Garcia is an undocumented immigrant. However, a judge in 2019 declared that he not be deported to El Salvador as a matter of personal safety. With his March 15, 2025, deportation, a federal judge in Maryland upheld that 2019 ruling. The Supreme Court, reports the New York Times, unanimously upheld in part this decision.
The Trump Administration has not acquiesced, and believes the return of Abrego Garcia was lawful and appropriate; with Abrego Garcia no longer on U.S. soil, his fate and who decides has become unclear. Count CAR as a group fully supportive of the president.
In a statement released Monday, CAR said, “Despite clear findings from federal immigration courts that Abrego Garcia is a dangerous, unlawful immigrant and a validated member of the violent MS-13 gang, these networks repeatedly and falsely described him as a ‘Maryland father,”legal resident,’ and sympathetic victim. In doing so, they misled the public, concealed crucial facts, and violated the public interest obligations required of FCC licensees.”
While the statement is debatable, the bigger matter at hand may be whether it is up to the Commission to become a content commander, serving as a policing group for what an independent news organization may or may not report. Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gómez has repeatedly warned of the FCC’s “weaponization” by the Trump administration and how it should not be an arbiter of facts when it comes to its broadcast licensees.
As CAR President Daniel Suhr sees it, this wasn’t merely sloppy reporting. “It was deliberate distortion,” Suhr writes. “NBC, ABC, and CBS tried to gaslight the American people with a manufactured sob story. Inaccurate news reporting is not journalism, and it’s not in the public interest. It’s also not protected by the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court has said many times … These networks had every opportunity, and a responsibility, to report the truth, but instead, they chose to craft a narrative that fit their political agenda. That’s a betrayal of journalistic integrity and why public trust in media is at historic lows.”
CAR also argues that the reporting of Mr. Abrego Garcia is tied to “a broader, systemic problem in corporate media,” and in its view — citing D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman — “Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet.”
The full complaint can be found here.
