DOJ appeals dismissal of charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Aug. 18 (UPI) — The Justice Department is asking a federal appeals court to overturn a court order that dismissed criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was erroneously deported to a prison in El Salvador.

In May, U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw, based in Nashville, ruled that the prosecution was only happening because he challenged his deportation.

Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to the CECOT detention facility in El Salvador in 2025, despite a 2019 order from a judge barring his deportation to his native country. After months of pressure, the administration returned him to the United States then charged him with human trafficking stemming from a traffic stop in Tennessee in 2022. The traffic stop did not result in charges against Abrego Garcia.

“The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power,” Crenshaw wrote.

Abrego Garcia is also fighting his deportation case in Maryland, where the administration is trying to deport him to Liberia. A judge there has blocked the government from rearresting him.

On Monday, the Justice Department wrote in a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit denying that the prosecution was vindictive. It said the department had “multiple legitimate bases to prosecute” Abrego Garcia.

“The decision to seek an indictment against Abrego Garcia for human smuggling was made by career prosecutors based on the evidence, the law and their firm belief that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Abrego Garcia had committed the offenses charged,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

The department argued that the court order from May, “relied on a host of dubious blockessments of discretionary Executive Branch functions, covering virtually every aspect of the charging decision. As a result, the court’s reasoning threatens a serious and untenable encroachment on prosecutorial decision making far beyond this case.”

Crenshaw’s order “marks a dramatic expansion of the power of courts to dismiss serious criminal charges based on subjective blockessments of a prosecutor’s motivations and is an unwarranted intrusion into the executive’s powers and responsibility to protect the public.”

In a statement to CBS News, Abrego Garcia’s defense team said the Justice Department’s press release is “flat wrong.” They said, “the indictment and prosecution of Abrego Garcia was, in fact, vindictive; the evidence before the district court established just that; and the proof was clear notwithstanding the DOJ’s refusal to call the actual decision makers, including [Attorney General Todd] Blanche, to testify under oath.”

“This case was initiated vindictively and on instructions from the White House after our client successfully won his Supreme Court case,” his defense team added.