Abrego Garcia wins request for hearing on whether smuggling charges are illegally 'vindictive'

A federal judge has concluded that the Department of Justice’s prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on human smuggling charges may be an illegal retaliation after he successfully sued the Trump administration over his deportation to El Salvador.

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A federal judge has concluded that the Department of Justice’s prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on human smuggling charges may be an illegal retaliation after he successfully sued the Trump administration over his deportation to El Salvador.

The case of Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was a construction worker in Maryland, has become a proxy for the partisan struggle over President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration policy and mass deportation agenda.

U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw late Friday granted a request by lawyers for Abrego Garcia and ordered discovery and an evidentiary hearing in Abrego Garcia’s effort to show that the federal human smuggling case against him in Tennessee is illegally retaliatory.

Crenshaw said Abrego Garcia had shown that there is “some evidence that the prosecution against him may be indicative.” That evidence included statements by various Trump administration officials and the timeline of the charges being filed.

The departments of Justice and Homeland Security did not immediately respond to inquiries about the case Saturday.