HARRISBURG, Pa. — A federal judge has concluded that the Department of Justice’s prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on human smuggling charges may be an illegal retaliation after he successfully sued the Trump administration over his deportation to El Salvador.
The case of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was a construction worker in Maryland, has become a proxy for the partisan struggle over President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration policy and mass deportation agenda.
U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw late Friday granted a request by lawyers for Abrego Garcia and ordered discovery and an evidentiary hearing in Abrego Garcia’s effort to show that the federal human smuggling case against him in Tennessee is illegally retaliatory.
Crenshaw said Abrego Garcia had shown that there is “some evidence that the prosecution against him may be vindictive.” That evidence included statements by various Trump administration officials and the timeline of the charges being filed.
The departments of Justice and Homeland Security did not immediately respond to inquiries about the case Saturday.
In his 16-page ruling, Crenshaw said many statements by Trump administration officials “raise cause for concern,” but one stood out.
That statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, on a Fox News program after Abrego Garcia was charged in June, seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice charged Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful deportation case, Crenshaw wrote.
Blanche’s ”remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for (Abrego Garcia’s) criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights” to sue over his deportation “rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct,” Crenshaw wrote.
Likewise, Crenshaw noted that the Department of Homeland Security reopened an investigation into Abrego Garcia days after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia was indicted on May 21 and charged June 6, the day the U.S. brought him from a prison in El Salvador back to the U.S. He pleaded not guilty and is now being held in Pennsylvania.
If convicted in the Tennessee case, Abrego Garcia will be deported, federal officials have said. A U.S. immigration judge has denied Abrego Garcia’s bid for asylum, although he can appeal.
The Salvadoran national has an American wife and children and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the United States illegally as a teenager.
In 2019, he was arrested by immigration agents. He requested asylum but was not eligible because he had been in the U.S. for more than a year. But the judge ruled he could not be deported to El Salvador, where he faced danger from a gang that targeted his family.
The human smuggling charges in Tennessee stem from a 2022 traffic stop. He was not charged at the time.
Trump administration officials have waged a relentless public relations campaign against Abrego Garcia, repeatedly referring to him as a member of the MS-13 gang, among other things, despite the fact he has not been convicted of any crimes.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have denounced the criminal charges and the deportation efforts, saying they are an attempt to punish him for standing up to the administration.
Abrego Garcia contends that, while imprisoned in El Salvador, he suffered beatings, sleep deprivation and psychological torture. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has denied those allegations.
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