Trump administration officials who celebrated the arrest of Kilmar Abrego Garcia may be enough “direct evidence” to throw out a criminal case against the wrongfully deported Salvadoran immigrant for “vindictive” prosecution, according to a federal judge.
The judge overseeing his criminal prosecution argued that the government likely brought the case against him for “vindictive” reasons and will hear more evidence before reaching a final decision on whether to dismiss it altogether.
Attorneys for Abrego Garcia argued that he was “singled out” by administration officials in retaliation for his high-profile legal battle challenging his wrongful arrest and removal to a brutal Salvadoran prison.
Despite admitting in court that he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, government lawyers and top administration officials spent weeks insisting Abrego Garcia would never be allowed back into the country. He was returned to the United States in June only to face a criminal indictment that was introduced weeks after he was mistakenly deported.
Potential evidence of that retaliatory prosecution includes celebratory statements from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi and their subordinates, according to Tennessee District Judge Waverly Crenshaw.
But “most tellingly,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche “strikingly” admitted in a Fox News interview that prosecutors were “investigating” him after a judge in Maryland had questioned the administration and accused the government of “doing something wrong,” Crenshaw noted.
“To remove any doubt, Deputy Attorney General Blanche said that the criminal case was brought to return [Abrego Garcia] to the United States,” Crenshaw wrote. “This could be direct evidence of vindictiveness.”
Blanche’s “remarkable statements” could be enough to establish motivations for the criminal case against him to be considered illegal retaliation for the “exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights” to sue the government, “rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct,” the judge said.
That timing also suggests a “realistic likelihood” that senior officials at the Department of Justice and Homeland Security “may have induced” federal prosecutors to charge Abrego Garcia in retaliation for the Maryland lawsuit, Crenshaw added.
More evidentiary hearings will get to the bottom of those questions, the judge said.
Abrego Garcia is entangled in a series of overlapping federal court cases at the center of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.
He remains in Immigration and Customs Enforcement Custody as he seeks to have his immigration case reopened to request asylum in the United States. The immigration court judge overseeing that case denied his request this week; Abrego Garcia has 30 days to appeal.
In August, his lawyers admitted that motions to dismiss criminal cases on grounds of selective or vindictive prosecution are rarely granted but “if there has ever been a case for dismissal on those grounds, this is that case.”
“The government is attempting to use this case — and this Court — to punish Mr. Abrego for successfully fighting his unlawful removal. That is a constitutional violation of the most basic sort,” they said.
A two-count indictment in Tennessee accuses Abrego Garcia of participating in a years-long conspiracy to illegally smuggle undocumented immigrants from Texas to other parts of the country. He faces one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and one count of unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.
But in their request to keep him in jail before trial, federal prosecutors also claimed he is a member of transnational gang MS-13, and “personally participated in violent crime, including murder.”
Prosecutors also claim he “abused” women and trafficked children, firearms and narcotics, and there is also an ongoing investigation into “solicitation of child pornography.”
Abrego Garcia is not facing any charges on those allegations and Judge Crenshaw previously ruled that the government failed to link those allegations to evidence that implicates him.
