Judge Dismisses Charges Against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Says Gov’t Engaged In Vindictive Prosecution

from the fuckarounds-just-found-out dept

It’s one thing to accuse the government of engaging in vindictive prosecutions. It’s quite another thing to prove it.

The deck is stacked against those making these claims. These allegations rarely succeed. The government gets the benefit of the doubt and has the ability to make evidence against its position simply disappear.

It didn’t work here, though. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was among the initial wave of deportations in which the US government sent hundreds of people to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT maximum security prison — one overseen (almost directly) by a man who had declared himself the world’s “coolest dictator.”

Abrego Garcia, however, didn’t go silently. He fought back, first against the fact-free allegations that he was a dangerous MS-13 gang member before fighting the government’s insistence on punishing him for daring to speak up. That retaliation took many forms, including multiple attempts to send Garcia to countries like Liberia and Uganda, rather than allow him to reside in Costa Rica, which had already offered to take Garcia off the government’s hands. It also took the form of gag orders the government hoped would silence Garcia while it continued to make unproven claims about Garcia’s allegedly violent gang-related history.

The more Abrego Garcia pushed back, the angrier the government got. But anger is hardly useful when you’re supposed to be in the business of seeking justice and enforcing the law. It’s even more useless when the only people left manning the DOJ and DHS are people long on sycophancy and short on experience.

The end result is a legal unicorn: a sustained allegation of vindictive prosecution that has resulted in the dismissal of criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The ruling [PDF] — issued by federal judge Waverly Crenshaw (and brought to us by Liz Dye on Bluesky) — opens with a quote of a former federal prosecutor (and Supreme Court justice) that makes it clear where this order is headed.

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.” Robert H. Jackson, The Federal Prosecutor, 31 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 3, 5 (1940). That is the situation here.

That’s the leadoff. The payoff involves running down everything the administration did in hopes of bullying Abrego Garcia into silence/compliance. Those steps involved everything from resurrecting a traffic stop of a car driven by someone else that never resulted in criminal charges to a government attorney resigning, rather than help the administration pursue its petty revenge. Lots of DOJ/DHS attorneys/officials are name-checked on the way to the court’s ruling in favor of Abrego Garcia.

In short, the timing of [HSI] Agent VanWie’s decision to reopen the closed HSI investigation of the November 2022 traffic stop and [acting US Attorney General Todd] Blanche’s now unrebutted public statements tying the reopened investigation to Abrego’s successful lawsuit taints the investigation with a vindictive motive. That vindictive taint continued with [Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash] Singh’s close substantive oversight of McGuire’s and his prosecution team’s work leading to the indictment. Finally, after the indictment was presented, the Executive Branch found a way to return Abrego to the United States to comply with the District of Maryland’s order to facilitate his return. While the Court finds insufficient evidence of actual vindictiveness, the Court concludes that the Government has failed to rebut the presumption of vindictiveness. The evidence it labels as newly discovered was available to be obtained with due diligence long before April 2025. Even more, it does not explain the Government’s change in position to remove Abrego and not prosecute him to then prosecute and not remove him. McGuire’s subjective explanations also do not cure the retaliatory taint that set the investigation and resulting indictment in motion. Because the presumption of vindictiveness remains unrebutted, the indictment must be dismissed.

Listed above this paragraph is a comprehensive recounting of the government’s actions in this case, which includes several failed appeals (after it was ordered to return Garcia to the US), including a rare loss in the US Supreme Court. It also details the social media postings and press releases issued by the administration, which again stated (without providing evidence) that Garcia was a MS-13 gang member involved in human trafficking.

Because Garcia refused to go quickly and quietly, the administration (begrudgingly, following several appeals) returned him to the United States only to hit him with criminal charges meant to keep him locked up until the government could toss him into the next available hellhole devoid of human rights (Liberia, Uganda, etc.).

None of this worked, and now the government has been fully exposed as the bullying thug it is. Garcia is free to go, mainly because it’s impossible for the Trump administration to provide anything that credibly counters the apparent truth of the matter: Garcia was punished solely because he chose to fight back.

The Court does not reach its conclusion lightly. The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution. The Executive Branch closed its investigation on the November 2022 traffic stop. Only after Abrego succeeded in vindicating his rights did the Executive Branch reopen that investigation. What the Government labels as “new evidence” was not new as a matter of law. The prosecutor’s subjective good faith does not cure the retaliatory taint.

This is a massive loss for the Trump administration. While it only affects one of hundreds of victims of its anti-migrant purge efforts, it was a case this administration threw all of its power at and still got shut out by the court. Bullies only win when no one fights back. And a single El Salvadoran has managed to expose the inherent weaknesses of the administration’s institutional bigotry — something that operates outside of the law as frequently as possible. That the government chose to appeal repeatedly just means it has secured multiple levels of adverse precedent. It has been beaten by the person the administration accidentally turned into the poster boy for racist immigration efforts.

Filed Under: bigotry, cecot, dhs, ice, kilmar abrego garcia, mass deportation, trump administration