Charges Against Kilmar Abrego Garcia Appear “Vindictive,” Judge Rules

A federal judge ruled last week that the U.S. government likely engaged in retaliatory prosecution against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration earlier this year.

Waverly Crenshaw Jr., a federal judge based in Nashville, Tennessee, said in a 16-page order issued on Friday that there is a “realistic likelihood” that the human trafficking charges against Abrego Garcia were a “vindictive” action by the administration after he filed a successful lawsuit challenging his illegal deportation to El Salvador.

For several weeks after Abrego Garcia was initially deported in March, the White House insisted that he was sent to a “super-prison” in El Salvador because of alleged ties to the MS-13 gang, bizarrely citing his tattoos and the types of hats he wore as supposed evidence. President Donald Trump went as far as to share a blatantly photoshopped picture of Abrego Garcia’s hands with the letters “MS-13” on them to justify the illegal deportation. Legal experts condemned the administration for violating Abrego Garcia’s due process rights.

Upon Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. in June, Trump officials issued dubious charges against Abrego Garcia stemming from a traffic incident years prior. In 2022, Abrego Garcia was pulled over by law enforcement officers who expressed suspicion that he was smuggling undocumented immigrants across the country. Abrego Garcia told officers that he was driving co-workers to and from construction jobs, which his wife later noted he did regularly. He was not arrested during that incident.

Crenshaw said in his ruling on Friday that comments made by Trump officials after Abrego Garcia re-entered the U.S. “raise cause for concern” that they are using the 2022 incident as a means to punish Abrego Garcia for having interrupted their efforts to deport him. Indeed, the day of Abrego Garcia’s return, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on Fox News, informing viewers that his return was based on new criminal charges, not compliance with previous court orders.

“Blanche said that the criminal case was brought to return Abrego to the United States, ‘not [because of] a Judge,’ but instead, because of ‘an arrest warrant issued by a grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee.’ This could be direct evidence of vindictiveness,” Crenshaw stated in his ruling.

The judge added:

Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights to bring suit against the Executive Official Defendants, rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct.

Crenshaw didn’t make a final determination on what should happen next, but said he would allow Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to pursue the idea of vindictiveness on the part of the federal government in its arguments against the case. The judge also said he would allow his attorneys to gather evidence from the administration, obtain witnesses to testify about possible vindictiveness (including from Trump officials), and hold a hearing on the matter.

There are several other examples of the Trump administration acting vindictively against Abrego Garcia and his family members. In one instance that wasn’t mentioned in Crenshaw’s ruling on Friday, the Department of Homeland Security, in trying to push the baseless narrative that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, shared documents on its X account that included the home address of his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, forcing her to move to a safe house out of security concerns.

“I don’t feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions,” Vasquez Sura said in a statement shortly after.