Judge dismisses Abrego Garcia indictment as vindictive prosecution

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant living in Maryland with his wife and U.S.-citizen children, had a 2019 📖immigration court order protecting him from deportation to El Salvador. An immigration judge granted that 📖withholding of removal because Abrego Garcia faced credible danger from a gang that had threatened him as a teenager. ICE deported him anyway on March 15, 2025, in what the government later admitted in a court filing was .

Abrego Garcia landed in El Salvador's maximum-security CECOT prison, a facility built to hold tens of thousands of suspected gang members under conditions widely condemned by human rights monitors. He had never been convicted of a crime in either country.

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled on April 10, 2025, that the government must to the United States and handle his case as if the deportation had never happened. The Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia on June 6, 2025, after Attorney General Pam Bondi said El Salvador agreed to release him upon presentation of a U.S. arrest warrant.

The arrest warrant was for a two-count human smuggling indictment — charges based on a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop that federal authorities had already investigated and closed without charges before the deportation.

On December 1, 2022, Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped Abrego Garcia for driving 75 miles per hour in a 65-mph zone in the Cookeville area, roughly 80 miles east of Nashville. Officers found eight passengers in the vehicle but no luggage. ICE reviewed the stop and opened a human smuggling inquiry. Abrego Garcia was neither cited nor arrested. The government closed the investigation.

Prosecutors later alleged the stop was part of a paid smuggling operation. But on that traffic stop and didn't reopen it until after Abrego Garcia won his lawsuit and courts ordered his return.

The DOJ indicted Abrego Garcia on human smuggling charges the same day the government announced his return to the U.S., on June 6, 2025. Aakash Singh — a 33-year-old associate deputy attorney general in Todd Blanche's office who coordinated with U.S. attorneys across the country — described the charges as a in April communications with the U.S. Attorney in Nashville. Singh arranged meetings among federal prosecutors in multiple districts to build the case.

Singh's involvement, the judge found, touched 'everything from the timing of the indictment to the substance of the potential charges.'

Todd Blanche — who was Deputy Attorney General when the indictment was filed and later became Acting Attorney General — gave the prosecution's motive away on Fox News. He said DOJ started investigating Abrego Garcia after a Maryland judge found that the administration 'had no right to deport him' and had done 'something wrong.' Judge Crenshaw wrote in his that 'Blanche's words directly confirm that the Executive Branch reopened the criminal investigation because the Judicial Branch required the Executive Branch to facilitate Abrego's return from El Salvador.'

Crenshaw found those statements 'now unrebutted' — the government never offered a non-retaliatory explanation for why it reopened a closed case the moment courts forced Abrego Garcia's return.

The 📖vindictive prosecution doctrine, rooted in the Supreme Court's 1974 ruling in and the Fifth Amendment's 📖Due Process Clause, bars the government from bringing new or harsher charges against a defendant because that person exercised a legal right. Once a defendant shows a 'reasonable likelihood' that charges are retaliatory, the burden shifts to the government to demonstrate a legitimate, non-retaliatory reason.

Crenshaw found the timing of the indictment, Blanche's public statements, and Singh's hands-on oversight of the prosecution together established presumptive vindictiveness. The government couldn't overcome that presumption.

In his ruling, Crenshaw wrote that 'The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power.' He dismissed the two-count indictment with prejudice, meaning the same charges can't be refiled in that court. Abrego Garcia was released from the conditions of his bond.

Crenshaw was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate 92-to-0 on April 11, 2016. He became chief judge of the Middle District of Tennessee in 2017.

The DOJ called the ruling 'wrong and dangerous' and vowed to appeal to the Sixth Circuit. DHS said Abrego Garcia's 'final order of removal' remained in effect and called the dismissal 'naked judicial activism,' adding that 'this Salvadoran is not going to remain in our country.' Legal observers noted the government could seek an interlocutory appeal and that the case could eventually reach the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continued pursuing deportation on a separate track — seeking to send Abrego Garcia to Uganda or Liberia after the original El Salvador bar remained in force. A Maryland federal judge blocked those efforts, finding and barring ICE from re-detaining him after a 90-day detention limit expired.

The case became one of the most prominent tests of how far executive power can extend when courts rule against the government on 📖immigration enforcement. Abrego Garcia's civil lawsuit and the criminal prosecution ran on parallel tracks, with the criminal case generating evidence — including Blanche's public statements and Singh's emails — that ultimately sank the prosecution itself.

The noted that the ruling was the first time a federal judge found the Trump DOJ engaged in 📖vindictive prosecution in a high-profile immigration-related criminal case, setting a potential precedent for similar challenges.