DOJ Appeals Dismissal of Human Smuggling Charges Against Kilmar Abrego Garcia

The Department of Justice is appealing a court decision that dismissed human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

The notice of appeal, filed on June 22, comes one month after U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw tossed out the government’s case, saying it was “vindictive and selective prosecution in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”

“The court does not reach its conclusion lightly,” Crenshaw had written in his May 22 opinion.

“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.”

Crenshaw, when explaining his decision, pointed to statements by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who said the government had reopened its investigation into the Salvadoran after “a judge in Maryland and many members of Congress” questioned why he was being deported.

In November 2022, Tennessee highway patrol pulled Abrego Garcia over for speeding, and allegedly discovered that he was carrying “nine Hispanic males, none of whom had any identification” in his vehicle.

A month later, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Nashville opened an investigation, but Garcia was not charged at that time.

Years later in March 2025, Abrego Garcia became the center of a political firestorm when he was deported to El Salvador’s CECOT Terrorism Confinement Center along with a planeful of other illegal immigrants.

Then followed a complex legal battle all the way up to the Supreme Court, in which the government returned Abrego Garcia to U.S. soil but continues to pursue his deportation.

Abrego Garcia has sued to prevent that.

Meanwhile, the DHS reopened its investigation into Abrego Garcia, and in May 2025, the Justice Department indicted him on charges of human smuggling.

The indictment alleges that he and his co-conspirators were paid to bring “undocumented aliens to the United States from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere, ultimately passing through Mexico before crossing into Texas.”

It also accused him of being a member of the transnational criminal organization called MS-13.

Parallel to the criminal case, the government has sought to deport Abrego Garcia to several African nations, including Eswatini, Liberia, and Uganda.

He has said he fears being deported to his native El Salvador; his attorneys have asked that he be deported to Costa Rica.

Last October, an immigration judge rejected his plea to reopen his unsuccessful 2019 asylum case.