Judge dismisses smuggling indictment against Maryland man in deportation case

A federal judge in Nashville dismissed the human smuggling indictment against Kilmar Abrego García, ruling that prosecutors brought the case in retaliation after he won a legal fight over being deported to El Salvador. U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw found the government would not have pursued the charges absent Abrego García’s successful challenge to his removal.

The criminal case grew out of a November 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, when police pulled over Abrego García and found nine passengers in his vehicle. But the case took on far broader significance after his March 2025 deportation to El Salvador, despite a 2019 immigration court order barring his removal there because of the risk of persecution. The government later acknowledged that deportation was illegal, and the Supreme Court of the United States ordered officials to facilitate his return.

Abrego García was returned to the United States in June 2025 only after prosecutors secured the indictment charging him with human smuggling. He pleaded not guilty and argued that the criminal case was punishment for his successful lawsuit challenging the deportation that had made him one of the most visible faces of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Crenshaw agreed that the timing mattered. In dismissing the indictment on Thursday, he said the Justice Department reopened the Tennessee investigation only after Abrego García filed suit, and he found prosecutors failed to rebut the presumption that the case was vindictive.

The ruling strikes at a central question in the administration’s enforcement strategy: whether criminal charges were used to repair the political damage from a botched deportation that drew national outrage and deepened doubts about government credibility. The case had already become a flashpoint for critics of Trump’s immigration agenda, especially after the U.S. acknowledged that Abrego García had been removed in violation of a court order protecting him from return to El Salvador.

Abrego García’s attorneys said he had been targeted by a politicized White House and an independent Justice Department that had been abused for prosecuting power. The judge relied in part on statements from now-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, according to reporting on the ruling, suggesting the Tennessee investigation was revived after Abrego García prevailed in his deportation challenge. The Department of Justice did not immediately comment on the dismissal.