Kilmar Abrego Garcia may have been charged because of Trump administration's vindictiveness, judge finds

Source: CNN

POLITICS * 3 MIN READ
Kilmar Abrego Garcia may have been charged because of Trump administration's vindictiveness, judge finds

PUBLISHED OCT 3, 2025, 6:09 PM ET
By Katelyn Polantz


Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador earlier this year, arrives for a check-in at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Baltimore, Maryland, US, on Monday, August 25, 2025. Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images/File

A federal judge says he believes the immigrant defendant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the administration wrongly sent to El Salvador, may have been targeted with a criminal charge by the Justice Department this year out of vindictiveness.

"The Government had a significant stake in retaliating against Abrego's success" suing the Trump administration after his wrongful removal to El Salvador in March, Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. of the Middle District of Tennessee wrote on Friday. "The Court finds Abrego has sufficiently presented some evidence that the Government had a stake in retaliating against him for exercising his rights in the Maryland suit and deterring him from continuing to exercise those rights."

The finding sets up another round of court proceedings where Abrego Garcia's lawyers will be able to dig into the Justice Department's decision-making this year. They are attempting to have two criminal charges he faces in the Tennessee federal court dismissed and seek evidence that may show the Trump administration's approach has been improper.

Crenshaw, an Obama appointee, hasn't made a final ruling yet on the allegations of it being a wrongfully vindictive prosecution, and said on Friday he would allow for evidence-gathering and a hearing, which could include testimony from witnesses and potentially even administration officials.

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Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/03/politics/kilmar-abrego-garcia-judge-rules-vindictive

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NEW: Judge Crenshaw finds that the Trump admin's criminal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia may well be vindictive—and greenlights discovery and an evidentiary hearing. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) 2025-10-03T20:19:23.337Z

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Joshua J. Friedman
‪@joshuajfriedman.com‬

NEW: Judge Crenshaw finds that the Trump admin's criminal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia may well be vindictive--and greenlights discovery and an evidentiary hearing.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tnmd.104622/gov.uscourts.tnmd.104622.138.0.pdf

MEMORANDUM OPINION
By way of context, a federal prosecutor is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all. The obligation to govern impartially concerns, above all, the state's exercise of coercive power-meaning its power to deprive its subjects of life, liberty, or property... As a representative of the state, a prosecutor's exercise of coercive power must be impartial ... [in] that prosecutorial power may not be exercised vindictivelymeaning that the prosecutor may not punish a defendant for exercising a protected statutory or constitutional right.
United States v. Zakhari, 85 F.4th 367, 384-85 (6th Cir. 2023) (Kethledge, J., concurring) (citations and quotations omitted). This context frames review of Defendant Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia's {"Abrego"} motion to dismiss his indictment for vindictive and selective
prosecution. (Doc. Nos. 104-05). The Government opposes the motion (Doc. No. 121), and Abrego has replied (Doc. No. 127). Abrego's motion is not ripe for decision because he seeks discovery and an evidentiary hearing because there is some evidence of vindictiveness here. For the reasons that follow, the Court holds that the totality of events creates a sufficient evidentiary basis to conclude that there is a "realistic likelihood of vindictiveness" that entitles Abrego to discovery and requires an evidentiary hearing before the Court decides his motion. United States
v. Andrews, 633 F.2d 449, 457 (6th Cir. 1980) (en banc), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 927 (1981).
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October 3, 2025 at 4:19 PM
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