In Nashville, a federal judge dismisses indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia

NASHVILLE — A federal judge on Friday dismissed a criminal indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old man living in Maryland who was wrongly deported to El Salvador last year, calling the prosecution “vindictive and selective.”

“Then-Attorney General Robert H. Jackson warned his fellow prosecutors long ago of the danger of picking the person first and the crime second … That is the situation here,” U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw wrote in an opinion filed Friday.

Abrego, as he is identified in court documents, entered the United States illegally as a teen. He was deported to an El Salvador prison in March, despite a 2019 order issued by an immigration judge that barred his deportation to the country he said he fled under fear of gang violence. 

Abrego fought the deportation, and the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the federal government to “facilitate” his return to the United States in April. The government then reopened an investigation stemming from a two-year-old Tennessee traffic stop, and a grand jury returned a two-count human smuggling indictment against Abrego in June. 

Abrego pleaded not guilty to the charges and sought to dismiss them, alleging they were brought in retaliation for his high-profile, successful fight against his deportation.

On Friday, Crenshaw agreed.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia prosecutor testifies criminal charges were not ‘vindictive’

“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,” Crenshaw wrote. “The Executive Branch closed its investigation on the November 2022 traffic stop. Only after Abrego succeeded in vindicating his rights did the Executive Branch reopen that investigation.”

Crenshaw previously ruled in October that there was “realistic likelihood” that the government behaved vindictively when it brought Abrego to Tennessee to face criminal charges. That ruling allowed Abrego’s attorneys to seek documents and testimony from Trump administration officials involved with the case.

Federal prosecutor Rob McGuire testified in February that the criminal charges were not vindictive.

Crenshaw’s opinion honed in on the feds’ reopening of the case against Abrego and on the scrutiny applied to McGuire’s prosecution of the case by Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, who was working in the office of then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche has served as acting-U.S. Attorney General following the March firing of Pam Bondi. 

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who has advocated for the full release of Abrego, traveling to El Salvador to visit the latter during his detainment, said Friday’s decision was a “strong repudiation of Trump’s lawless DOJ.”

“Today, a federal judge made clear what we have long known: the Department of Justice was engaged in a vindictive prosecution against Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen said in a statement. “As the judge stated, this was a blatant ‘abuse of prosecutorial power’ – one that should disturb all Americans.”

Anita Wadhwai contributed to this story.