A federal judge in Tennessee dismissed the criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Friday, finding that the investigation into his alleged involvement with human trafficking was “tainted.”
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He said the probe was only launched to justify the government’s decision to remove him to El Salvador.
“The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution,” U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw wrote in his decision.
Prosecutors in the Middle District of Tennessee were investigating him with the support of the Department of Justice in Washington.
After Abrego was deported to El Salvador last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration had to work to bring him back. He was eventually returned to the U.S. and was immediately hit with human smuggling charges, based on a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. He pleaded not guilty.
Body camera video from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego after he was pulled over for speeding four years ago. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed their suspicions of smuggling among themselves. However, Abrego was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
Crenshaw said Friday that federal authorities closed the investigation into the November traffic stop and only reopened it after Abrego was successful in his deportation case in federal court in Maryland.
“What the Government labels as ‘new evidence’ was not new as a matter of law,” the judge wrote.
Crenshaw said that while there is insufficient evidence of “actual vindictiveness,” he believes the Trump administration has failed to rebut the “presumption of vindictiveness,” which is all Crenshaw needs to dismiss these charges.
“Instead of investigating the November 2022 traffic stop to identify who was responsible for the human smuggling, [U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd] Blanche started the investigation to implicate Abrego,” Crenshaw wrote. “He did so to justify the Executive Branch’s decision to remove him to El Salvador.”
Sean Hecker, Abrego’s attorney, said that his client “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.”
The Justice Department pushed back on the decision. “Another activist judge has placed politics above public safety,” a spokesperson wrote. “The judge’s order is wrong and dangerous, and we will appeal.”
While Abrego is a Salvadoran citizen, a court order from 2019 prevents him from being deported to that country. That’s because an immigration judge determined that he faced danger in El Salvador from a gang that had threatened his family. Abrego, 30, immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager and is married to an American woman, with whom he has a child. He has lived and worked in Maryland for years under the regular supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Robert McGuire, who was acting U.S. attorney when Abrego was charged, said in February that he knew the decision to indict Abrego had consequences for him personally, as well as for the entire Middle District of Tennessee U.S. attorney’s office.
“I was prepared for whatever was going to happen because I felt very confident that the defendant had committed a crime and I could prove it,” McGuire said.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who visited Abrego while he was being held in El Salvador, said in a statement that the dismissal of the criminal charges “made clear what we have long known: the Department of Justice was engaged in a vindictive prosecution against Kilmar Abrego Garcia. As the judge stated, this was a blatant ‘abuse of prosecutorial power’ — one that should disturb all Americans.”
