Kilmar Ábrego García spent weeks in one of the Western Hemisphere’s most notorious prisons because of what the US government called an “administrative error.” When he sued his way back, prosecutors charged him with human smuggling. On Friday, a federal judge in Nashville concluded what had long been suspected: the charges existed because he fought back.

“The evidence before this court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power,” US District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. wrote in a 32-page memorandum dismissing the two-count indictment. “Absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution.”

Courts occasionally find prosecutorial misconduct. They almost never state, this directly, that the executive branch brought criminal charges to punish someone for asserting constitutional rights.

A closed case, reopened

The smuggling charges stemmed from a November 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. A state trooper pulled Ábrego García over for speeding and found nine passengers in his vehicle. Body camera footage showed a calm exchange. Officers discussed suspicions of smuggling among themselves but let him drive away with a warning, according to the Associated Press.

Homeland Security was aware of the stop. The agency opened an investigation, then closed it — and subsequently deported Ábrego García to El Salvador in March 2025.

That deportation was illegal. A 2019 immigration court order had barred the government from sending him to El Salvador because of documented risks from gangs that had terrorized his family. The government later acknowledged the error.

Ábrego García, 30, had lived in Maryland since arriving in the US as a teenager fleeing gang violence in El Salvador. He married an American citizen, fathered a child, and worked in construction under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision.

The pivot to prosecution

In March 2025, alongside roughly 260 others — chiefly Venezuelans — Ábrego García was dispatched to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known as Cecot, a mega-prison built to warehouse accused gang members. The Trump administration admitted the deportation was a mistake but resisted bringing him back.

The US Supreme Court unanimously ordered the government to “facilitate” his return. Days after that ruling, Homeland Security quietly reopened the previously closed investigation into the 2022 traffic stop. Senior Justice Department officials, including then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, pushed for an indictment, according to court documents.

Prosecutors secured one before bringing Ábrego García back in June 2025. At a press conference announcing the charges, Bondi declared: “This is what American justice looks like.”

Crenshaw was unmoved. He noted that prosecutors failed to call the official who reopened the closed investigation to explain the decision. The government offered only “secondhand testimony.”

The legal standard and what it means

Crenshaw stopped short of finding “actual vindictiveness” — a bar that typically requires something like a prosecutor explicitly admitting retaliatory motive. But he found substantial evidence of “presumptive vindictiveness,” including the indictment’s suspicious timing, Blanche’s public statements, and the sustained involvement of top Justice Department officials in what would ordinarily be a routine case.

The distinction matters. “Presumptive vindictiveness” shifts the burden to the government to demonstrate the prosecution was not retaliatory. Crenshaw found that burden unmet.

The Justice Department called the ruling “wrong and dangerous” and vowed to appeal. A spokesperson labeled Crenshaw, without evidence, “another activist judge” placing “politics above public safety.”

A stress test for the courts

For anyone watching from outside the US, the sequence is instructive. A government deports a resident in violation of a standing court order, concedes the mistake, then opens a criminal case after the resident successfully challenges the deportation. The question is whether courts can restrain that kind of retaliation — and whether higher courts will let the restraint stand.

Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who traveled to El Salvador in April 2025 to visit Ábrego García at Cecot, called the ruling “a strong repudiation of Trump’s lawless DOJ and a win for the Constitutional rights of everyone in our nation.”

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a victim of a politicized, vindictive White House and its lawyers at what used to be an independent Justice Department,” Ábrego García’s criminal defense attorneys said in a statement.

His criminal case is over. His immigration status is not. The government remains barred from deporting him to El Salvador but has floated sending him to several African countries, most recently Liberia, according to the Associated Press.

“Justice is a big word and an even bigger promise to fulfill,” Ábrego García said in a statement released by We Are Casa, the Maryland immigrant rights organization that has supported him throughout. “I am grateful that today, justice has taken a step forward.”

A step, not a destination. The DOJ appeal will test whether higher courts endorse Crenshaw’s reading. And the administration’s determination to remove Ábrego García from the country has not visibly diminished. What a government can do to a person who embarrassed it remains, in practice, an open question.

Sources