A federal judge on Friday granted Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss his indictment in Tennessee after Abrego argued that he was only charged by the Trump administration because he successfully challenged his illegal removal to El Salvador.
The Trump administration had resisted remedying that illegal removal for months before it finally brought him back in June 2025 to the United States, where it had criminal charges waiting for him.
“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 rare grant of such a motion, which the judge said he didn’t do lightly.
Vindictive prosecution motions are rarely granted but have been brought by several defendants targeted by the administration in President Donald Trump’s revenge-themed second term.
Abrego had pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges of illegally transporting undocumented immigrants. The charges stemmed from a 2022 traffic stop, timing that previously led Crenshaw to observe that the yearslong delay from then to Abrego’s 2025 charges is “atypical” in his jurisdiction.
“The Executive Branch closed its investigation on the November
2022 traffic stop,” Crenshaw wrote Friday, adding, “Only after Abrego succeeded in vindicating his rights did the Executive Branch
reopen that investigation.”
In his ruling, the judge referred to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s investigation as “tainted.” Crenshaw wrote that instead of investigating the November 2022 traffic stop to identify who was responsible for the human smuggling, “Blanche started the investigation to implicate Abrego. He did so to justify the Executive Branch’s decision to remove him to El Salvador.”
Abrego’s illegal removal and the prolonged fight over his return drew widespread attention last year.
The government had sent him to El Salvador in March of that year, then said it would never bring him back to the U.S. and then it finally returned him to the U.S., where it pursued the criminal case while seeking to remove him from the country again in a process that the government has been separately pursuing. Though Abrego is from El Salvador, his removal was illegal because previously he had secured an order preventing his removal to that country.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland had ordered his return after he filed a civil lawsuit in litigation that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which largely approved her order, though the government continued to resist his return until it finally got him back.
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