vindictive

Oct. 4 (UPI) — A federal judge has ordered a hearing to determine if the Justice Department is engaged in a vindictive prosecution of El Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. in a 16-page ruling on Friday granted a motion by Garcia’s defense team that seeks a hearing regarding a potential vindictive prosecution.

“The timing of Abrego’s indictment suggests a realistic likelihood that senior DOJ and [Homeland Security] officials may have induced Acting U.S. Attorney McGuire (albeit unknowingly) to criminally charge Abrego in retaliation for his Maryland lawsuit,” Crenshaw wrote.

The Maryland lawsuit refers to Garcia’s successful legal challenge in a federal court there, in which he showed the Department of Homeland Security erred when it deported him to El Salvador, which is his nation of citizenship.

While Garcia is subject to deportation, an immigration judge had ruled he can’t be deported to El Salvador, where Garcia, an alleged member of MS-13, said his life would be in danger from a rival gang.

That rival gang is Barrio 18, which is active in the United States as the 18th Street Gang.

El Salvador since has cracked down on gang activities and imprisoned many gang members.

Crenshaw said Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi each publicly “celebrated the charges against him,” CNN reported.

Such public celebrations are insufficient to show vindictive prosecution, though, according to The New York Times.

Instead, Garcia must show federal prosecutors improperly filed criminal charges against him as punishment for his Maryland court challenge.

Crenshaw said Garcia has shown the possibility that the prosecution is vindictive by initiating an investigation into the Tennessee traffic stop within days of the Supreme Court upholding lower court rulings requiring the Trump administration to facilitate Garcia’s return from El Salvador.

The matter arises from a Nov. 30, 2022, traffic stop of Garcia, in which Tennessee police found him traveling from Texas to Maryland with eight passengers and driving without a valid license, Crenshaw said.

The Tennessee police released Garcia with a warning regarding his expired driver’s license and did not charge him with any crimes or civil infractions.

After securing a two-count federal indictment against Garcia on May 21, the Trump administration flew Garcia back to the United States on June 6 to face prosecution for alleged human trafficking and conspiracy.

“Abrego has carried his burden of demonstrating some evidence that the prosecution against him may be vindictive,” Crenshaw wrote.

He said the Justice Department must provide “objective, on-the-record explanations” regarding the prosecution that was brought after the Biden administration said there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Garcia.

A hearing date has not been scheduled regarding the alleged vindictive prosecution.

If Crenshaw rules the prosecution is vindictive, he could dismiss the case against Garcia, who remains subject to deportation.

Former President Barack Obama nominated Crenshaw to the federal court in 2015.

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.

Aug. 20 (UPI) — Defense attorneys for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who the Trump administration wrongly deported to El Salvador this spring and then brought human trafficking charges against him once he returned to the United States, are accusing the Justice Department of vindictively prosecuting their client.

In a motion filed Tuesday, Abrego Garcia’s defense is asking the court to dismiss the charges brought against the 30-year-old Salvadoran national is punishment for him standing up to the Trump administration.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been singled out by the United States government. It is obvious why. And it is not because of the seriousness of his alleged conduct. Nor is it because he poses some unique threat to this country. Instead, Mr. Abrego was charged because he refused to acquiesce in the government’s violation of his due process rights,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in the motion.

Abrego Garcia, a resident of Maryland who is married to a U.S. citizen, was arrested amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration as part of its mass deportation plans. Despite a court order prohibiting his removal, he was deported to El Salvador in March and incarcerated in the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, where he said he was subjected to torture.

Abrego Garcia then challenged his removal in court, prompting the Trump administration to try and label him a gang member in public, while admitting in court it wrongly deported the immigrant.

He was returned to the United States in June, but only after he was charged with human smuggling by the Justice Department.

In the filing, his lawyers accused the Trump administration of conducting “a public campaign to punish Mr. Abrego for daring to fight back, culminating in the criminal investigation that led to the charges in this case.”

His lawyers point to comments from senior Trump administration officials, as well as President Donald Trump, calling him a criminal following his win in court that secured his return to the United States but before he was charged as proof of the White House’s vindictiveness.

“The government’s motive has been to paint Mr. Abrego as a criminal in order to punish him for challenging his removal, to avoid the embarrassment of accepting responsibility for its unlawful conduct and to shift public opinion around Mr. Abrego’s removal, including ‘mounting concerns’ with the government’s compliance with court orders,” they said in the filing.

The Justice Department’s case against Abrego Garcia stems from a November 2022 traffic stop in Putnam County, Tenn. Nine passengers were in the vehicle with him when stopped, but he was allowed to continue on his way, not even receiving a traffic ticket.

The government alleges he was the driver in a human smuggling conspiracy, and his defense argues that the Trump administration “has gone to extreme lengths” to make its criminal case.

His lawyers in the filing state that they have tried to secure the cooperation of multiple alleged conspirators who have already been sentenced to testify against Abrego Garcia, with its so-called star witness being a convicted leader of a human smuggling business with three felony convictions and who has been deported from the United States five times.

According to the filing, the Justice Department arranged for this alleged co-conspirator to be released early from a 30-month sentence to a halfway house to cooperate against Abrego Garcia, while relatives or those in relationship with this person also appear to be provided with “similar benefits” for providing corroborating testimony.

In the filing Tuesday, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argue that nothing had changed in the three years since the traffic stop, except for the government wrongly deporting him to El Salvador and that he challenged his deportation.

“As a matter of timing, it is clear that it was that lawsuit — and its effects on the government — that prompted the government to re-evaluate the 2022 traffic stop and bring this case,” the filing states.

“[N]o similarly situated defendant — an alleged driver in an alien smuggling conspiracy — has ever had to wait two and a half years to be charged with a crime where the facts had not changed since the stop itself.”

His defense alleges that the only explanation for the timing of the charges is that the government has chosen to punish him for fighting his deportation.

Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty.