Nashville federal judge finds “likelihood” prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is vindictive

Kilmar Abrego Garcia accompanied by his attorney, was released from the
Putnam County Jail on August 22, 2025.
(Photo: John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout)

by Anita Wadhwani, Nashville Outlook, October 6, 2025 - A federal judge in Nashville ruled that there is a “realistic likelihood” that the government behaved vindictively in bringing human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador before being brought to Tennessee in June to face criminal charges.

The 16-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw on Friday opens the door for Abrego’s attorneys to seek documents and testimony from Trump administration officials about their public remarks in the case and the basis of their decision to bring criminal charges. 

Crenshaw noted that the government has repeatedly been thwarted in its months-long efforts to deport Abrego in one of the earliest – and highest profile – tests of the Trump administration’s mass deportation tactics.

“This has created a significant burden on and embarrassment to the Executive Branch, that must now expend additional time, resources, and international goodwill to remove Abrego to El Salvador or elsewhere,” he wrote.

Abrego, as he is identified in the Tennessee case, illegally entered the United States as a teen and worked as an apprentice sheet metal worker in Maryland. The 30-year-old married father was deported in March despite a standing stay of deportation to El Salvador issued in 2019 by an immigration judge. A federal prosecutor who admitted Abrego’s deportation was in error was fired after his statements and has since filed a claim of retaliation. 

Abrego currently faces potential deportation to the African country of Eswatini, government officials have told his attorneys. He is due to return to a Maryland court in that case on Friday.

In granting Abrego’s request to proceed with allegations the government behaved improperly, Crenshaw highlighted the timeline of official actions leading up to Abrego’s criminal charges in Tennessee as evidence of “potential unreasonableness of the prosecution.”

Abrego was deported on March 15 after a routine Maryland traffic stop. Nine days later, attorneys for Abrego successfully filed suit in a Maryland federal court challenging the deportation in a decision the government appealed. The Supreme Court concurred with the decision. 

Crenshaw noted that within “mere days” of the Supreme Court decision, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reopened an investigation into a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, which resulted in neither a ticket nor an arrest at the time.

The government brought charges against Abrego less than a month after it started its reopened investigation — a remarkably swift investigation. A grand jury returned a two-count indictment a month later and Abrego was returned to Nashville to face charges. He has since been released pending trial and remains in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Abrego has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

On the day of his indictment, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others “celebrated the criminal charges against him” and said he would be found guilty, sentenced and deported again to El Salvador, Crenshaw wrote.

“Most tellingly,” the judge wrote, Homeland Security Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed that the government started investigating Abrego after a judge in Maryland questioned the government’s decision, found that it had no right to deport him to El Salvador and accused the government of wrongdoing.

“Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s remarkable statements could directly establish the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of constitutional and statutory rights to bring suit against the (federal government), rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct,” Crenshaw wrote.

Prosecutors have denied that the government has acted with any “ill will” in the case.”

Crenshaw’s order contains no final conclusions on whether the case against Abrego should be dismissed due to vindictive prosecution, but instead greenlights a request by Abrego’s attorneys to proceed with collecting evidence to present at an evidentiary hearing. No date for the hearing has been set. 

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