A federal judge dismissed the criminal case against Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, citing unlawful charges brought with “vindictive taint.” The case was described as stemming from a DOJ and Trump administration that had been embarrassed after mistakenly and wrongfully deporting him to El Salvador in 2025 and later being forced to return him. The judge criticized Attorney General Todd Blanche and the DOJ directly, warning that prosecutors should not pick people first and cases second. Garcia had been arrested and sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison despite a 2019 judge-issued order barring deportation. After his family and friends raised the issue and it gained media attention, the administration initially refused to return him, claiming without support that he was a gang member and a rapist.
"Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee criticized Blanche and the DOJ directly in his ruling, saying that the criminal charges against Abrego Garcia had been brought with "vindictive taint" that rendered them unlawful. Quoting former Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, Crenshaw wrote the following: "Then-Attorney General Robert H. Jackson warned his fellow prosecutors long ago of the danger of picking the person first and the crime second. 'Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.' That is the situation here.""
"Kilmar Abrego Garcia was originally swept up in the second Trump administration's deportation machine in early 2025, when he was arrested and shipped off to the notoriously brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador despite the fact that he had a valid order issued by a judge in 2019 that he was not to be deported. When this was pointed out by his family and friends and the story blew up into a media sensation, the Trump administration doubled down and initially refused to return Garcia despite another court order to do so, claiming baselessly that he was among other things a gang member and a rapist."
"A federal judge on Friday dismissed the criminal case against Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, noting the obvious: That the case was brought against Abrego Garcia by a vindictive DOJ and Trump administration that had been embarrassed by the attention around the man's case ever since it mistakenly and wrongfully deported him (and was then forced to return him) to El Salvador in 2025. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. criticized Blanche and the DOJ directly in his ruling."
#criminal-justice #immigration-and-deportation #doj-prosecutorial-misconduct #wrongful-deportation #federal-court-rulings
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