Judge dismisses Abrego Garcia smuggling case, cites vindictive prosecution
A federal judge tossed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s smuggling case, saying prosecutors pursued it with a retaliatory motive after he beat his deportation order. The ruling centers on a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop and the government’s reopening of the probe after his legal challenge.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. threw out the criminal case against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia on Thursday, finding the prosecution was vindictive and the investigation was tainted by retaliation. The Nashville judge said the government’s conduct amounted to an “abuse of prosecuting power” and pointed to a “realistic likelihood of vindictiveness” in the way federal officials pushed the case forward.
The dismissed indictment carried two federal counts tied to allegations that Abrego Garcia transported undocumented migrants. The case grew out of a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, when police pulled him over on I-40 while he was driving a van with eight other Latino men inside, none of them carrying luggage. Crenshaw said the record showed the case would not have been brought absent Abrego Garcia’s successful challenge to his deportation.
That challenge had already put the administration on the defensive. In March 2025, officials deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador and sent him to CECOT, the country’s mega-prison, despite a 2019 immigration-court order barring his removal there because of fears he would be persecuted. After federal court orders and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring the government to facilitate his return, he was brought back to the United States in June 2025 and later indicted.
Crenshaw had already signaled deep skepticism before Thursday’s dismissal. In earlier rulings, he found a prima facie showing of vindictiveness, then concluded in October 2025 that there was a realistic likelihood of vindictiveness. He canceled the trial in December 2025, and the final order now wipes out the criminal case altogether.
The judge also cited statements by now-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as evidence that federal investigators reopened the matter in response to the ruling that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was illegal. That finding lands as a major setback for the Trump administration, which had made the Maryland man a central figure in its immigration crackdown and initially described the deportation as an administrative error.
With the smuggling case now dismissed, the core question is no longer what happened on I-40 in 2022, but whether the government crossed the line when it turned a deportation fight into a criminal prosecution.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
