A federal judge dismissed the human smuggling case brought against Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Friday, saying the reopening of the case was tainted with a “vindictive motive.”
The human smuggling charges came after Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding on Dec. 1, 2022 in Tennessee, and authorities saw men with him in the vehicle. He pleaded not guilty.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw wrote that “objective evidence” establishes that the government would not have indicted Abrego Garcia if he hadn’t successfully sued them after he was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
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“The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power,” Crenshaw wrote.
Vindictive prosecution rulings are extraordinarily rare because the defense must hit a high bar of proving a punitive motive by the charging body.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on March 15, 2025, despite a 2019 court order forbidding his removal. Federal officials later called the deportation an “administrative error.”
Abrego Garcia filed a lawsuit against the federal government, and he returned to the U.S. last June following a court order. While the Justice Department didn’t initially bring human smuggling charges stemming from the traffic stop, it did so after Abrego Garcia was brought back to America.
Crenshaw said the timing of the reopening of the closed human smuggling investigation, as well as public statements by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, “taints the investigation with a vindictive motive.”
“Because the presumption of vindictiveness remains unrebutted, the indictment must be dismissed,” Crenshaw said.
Braden Boucek, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said that his office is evaluating an appeal in a statement to The Hill.
Boucek maintained that “undisputed evidence shows that the decision to charge Abrego was made by a career prosecutor based solely on the facts and the substantial evidence that a serious crime had been committed and deserved prosecution.”
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Sean Hecker, told USA Today in a texted statement that Abrego Garcia is a “victim of a politicized, vindictive White House and its lawyers at what used to be an independent Justice Department.”
“We are so pleased that he is a free man. Justifiably so,” Hecker said. “As this Administration continually chips away at our democracy, we remain grateful for an independent judiciary that will dispassionately apply binding precedent to the facts.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, called the judge’s ruling “a win for all our rights & the Constitution.”
“Today, a federal judge determined what we’ve known all along,” he said. “The Trump admin was engaged in a vindictive prosecution against Kilmar Abrego Garcia.”
Mahmoud Khalil appealing to Supreme Court
Another man locked in a legal battle with the federal government is taking his case to the nation’s highest court.
Former Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil is going to ask the Supreme Court to review an appeals court’s Friday decision to deny his request for a full court to re-hear his case, his legal team said.
In January 2026, the appeals court overturned a lower court’s order that prohibited the government from detaining or deporting him.
Khalil made headlines last year for leading pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia. Born in Syria, Khalil has citizenship in Algeria but is a legal permanent resident of the U.S. Federal authorities arrested him last March, alleging that the protests he was involved with were aligned with Hamas.
Khalil denied officials’ allegations, and said that his arrest and three-month detention in a Louisiana immigration jail were a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.” Federal authorities have not accused him of criminal conduct.
“Federal courts must have the power to step in when the government exploits our country’s immigration system to punish people for their constitutionally protected speech,” Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Friday. “If the Trump administration can target, arrest, detain, and deport Mahmoud for his speech, they can do it to anyone expressing an opinion they disagree with.”
Round out your reading
- Plea bargains keep America’s courts running. Guilt or innocence barely matters.
- Trump says the media isn’t covering one of his biggest accomplishments. We checked.
- Mike Lindell denied MyPillow was hacked. Its private data is now online.
- Red meat allergy rises with ticks as HHS targets Lyme disease, alpha-gal syndrome.
- We’re building a new Straight Arrow. Help us shape our future by taking our survey.
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