A federal judge in Tennessee on May 22 dismissed criminal human smuggling charges pending against Kilmar Abrego Garcia on the grounds of vindictive prosecution.
The Salvadoran national’s separate immigration case attracted attention across the country, including widespread protests, after the federal government detained him in March 2025 and transported him to El Salvador’s maximum security prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, along with an airplane full of other deportees. He was later returned to the United States, where he has had long-running legal battles with the Trump administration.
The May 2025 indictment brought against Abrego Garcia alleged that he had “conspired 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 alleged that Abrego Garcia and his co-conspirators obtained financial payments from the undocumented individuals for unlawfully transporting them into and around the United States.
The indictment also alleged that Abrego Garcia was “a member and associate of the transnational criminal organization … [known as] MS-13,” which it describes as “a criminal enterprise engaged in … acts and threats involving murder, extortion, narcotics trafficking, firearms trafficking, alien smuggling, and money laundering.”
Abrego Garcia “used his status in MS-13 to further his criminal activity” over the life of the criminal conspiracy during which he and co-conspirators “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens … many of whom were MS-13 members and associates,” according to the indictment.
Abrego Garcia denied wrongdoing, as well as the claim that he was a member of MS-13.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. granted Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss, saying that “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.”
Within days after the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reopened the closed investigation of a Nov. 30, 2022, traffic stop of Abrego Garcia in Tennessee. Less than a month after that, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged him and brought him back to the United States to answer the indictment, the judge said.
Senior DOJ official Todd Blanche, who is now acting U.S. attorney general, had made public statements indicating that the federal government started investigating Abrego Garcia after a judge in Maryland questioned the government’s decision to deport him. The court previously held that Blanche’s “remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights” and that Blanche directly tied the investigation “to Abrego’s Maryland suit,” Crenshaw said.
The reopening of the concluded investigation “is the source of the vindictiveness,” he said.
Quoting a prior legal precedent, the judge said a prosecutor’s “exercise of coercive power must be impartial … evenhanded, [and] applied without favoritism or bias.”
“The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power,” he said.
An immigrant advocacy group hailed the new court ruling.
“We have said from day one that this case was nothing more than a political vendetta,” Ama Frimpong, chief of services at We Are CASA, told The Epoch Times.
“The federal administration brazenly attempted to weaponize the criminal legal system to punish Kilmar for exposing their unlawful actions.”
Abrego Garcia told The Epoch Times through We Are CASA that “justice is a big word and an even bigger promise to fulfill; and I am grateful that today, justice has taken a step forward.”
The Epoch Times reached out to the DOJ for comment. No reply was received by publication time.
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