Justice Department moving to reopen criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia after judge drops smuggling charges

The Justice Department is pushing to revive criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, telling a federal appeals court late Monday that a judge erred in his scathing ruling that called the case against the man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison an “abuse of prosecuting power.”The government is appealing the May ruling by U.S.District Judge Waverly Crenshaw that threw out charges of human smuggling against the Salvadoran national.

The ruling amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a Justice Department that under President Donald Trump has repeatedly been accused of targeting defendants for political purposes.Crenshaw found that Abrego Garcia would never have faced criminal charges had he not successfully sued the government over his 2025 deportation.The ruling was an embarrassment for the Trump administration, which only brought him back after securing a criminal indictment against him.Crenshaw stopped short of finding the government acted with “actual vindictiveness,” a rarely-met standard that usually requires evidence like a prosecutor admitting that charges were filed in retaliation against someone.

But the judge did find there was enough evidence of “presumptive vindictiveness.” That included the timing of the indictment.Homeland Security had been aware of the 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee that was the basis for the human smuggling charges for more than two years before Abrego Garcia was deported.The agency only reopened the case and began investigating in earnest after Abrego Garcia was ordered returned to the U.S.Crenshaw also found that statements by U.S.

Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was a deputy at the time, suggested the Justice Department was targeting Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful-deportation case.In a brief filed Monday night with the 6th U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals, federal prosecutors argued that Crenshaw got it wrong.

Blanche’s statements, they argue, demonstrated a legitimate motive for prosecuting h...