smuggling charge

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 Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was a construction worker living legally in Maryland when he was wrongly deported to his home country, has become a proxy for the partisan struggle over President Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown and mass deportation agenda.

U.S. District 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 vindictive.” 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.

In his 16-page ruling, Crenshaw said many statements by administration officials “raise cause for concern,” but one stood out.

That statement by Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, on a Fox News program after Abrego Garcia was charged in June, seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice charged Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful-deportation case, Crenshaw wrote.

Blanche’s ”remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights” to sue over his deportation “rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct,” Crenshaw wrote.

Likewise, Crenshaw noted that the Department of Homeland Security reopened an investigation into Abrego Garcia days after the Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.

Abrego Garcia was indicted May 21 and charged June 6, the day the U.S. brought him back from a prison in El Salvador. He pleaded not guilty and is now being held in Pennsylvania.

If convicted in the Tennessee case, Abrego Garcia will be deported, federal officials have said. A U.S. immigration judge has denied Abrego Garcia’s bid for asylum, although he can appeal.

Abrego Garcia has an American wife and children and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the United States illegally as a teenager.

In 2019, he was arrested by immigration agents. He requested asylum but was not eligible because he had been in the U.S. for more than a year. But the judge ruled he could not be deported to El Salvador, where he faced danger from a gang that targeted his family.

The human smuggling charges in Tennessee stem from a 2022 traffic stop. He was not charged at the time.

Trump administration officials have waged a relentless public relations campaign against Abrego Garcia, repeatedly referring to him as a member of the MS-13 gang, among other things, despite the fact he has not been convicted of any crimes. The government has provided no clear evidence of gang affiliation, and Abrego Garcia denies the allegation.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have denounced the criminal charges and the deportation efforts, saying they are an attempt to punish him for standing up to the administration.

Abrego Garcia contends that, while imprisoned in El Salvador — in a notorious lockup with a documented history of human rights abuses — he suffered beatings, sleep deprivation and psychological torture. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has denied those allegations.

Levy writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Court records show that the Trump administration has agreed to spare from deportation a key witness in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in exchange for his cooperation in the case.

Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, 38, has been convicted of smuggling migrants and illegally reentering the United States after having been deported. He also pleaded guilty to “deadly conduct” in connection with a separate incident in which he drunkenly fired a gun in a Texas community.

Records reviewed by the Washington Post show that Hernandez Reyes has been released early from federal prison to a halfway house and has been given permission to stay in the U.S. for at least a year.

Prosecutors have identified Hernandez Reyes as the “first cooperator” in the case against Abrego Garcia, according to court filings. The Department of Homeland Security maintains that Hernandez Reyes owned a sport utility vehicle that Abrego Garcia was allegedly using to smuggle migrants when the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped him in 2022. That traffic stop is at the center of the criminal investigation against Abrego Garcia.

Hernandez Reyes is among several cooperating witnesses who could help the administration deport Abrego Garcia.

Abrego Garcia, a construction worker who had been living in Maryland, became a prime focus in Trump’s immigration crackdown when he was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March. Facing mounting pressure and a Supreme Court order, the administration returned him this month to face the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called “preposterous.”

On Friday, attorneys for Abrego Garcia asked a federal judge in Tennessee to delay his release from jail because of “contradictory statements” by the administration over whether he’ll be deported upon release.

A federal judge in Nashville has been preparing to release Abrego Garcia to await trial on human smuggling charges. But she’s been holding off over concerns that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would swiftly detain him and try to deport him again.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys are now asking the judge to continue to detain him after statements by administration officials “because we cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue by” the Justice Department.

Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty.