The Trump administration is pursuing the reinstatement of charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia after a district court determined his prosecution to be vindictive.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. dismissed the criminal indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, finding that he was the victim of “vindictive and selective prosecution.”
“In sum, the Government’s explanation gets the sequence backwards. Instead of investigating the November 2022 traffic stop to identify who was responsible for the human smuggling, Blanche started the investigation to implicate Abrego. He did so to justify the Executive Branch’s decision to remove him to El Salvador,” wrote Crenshaw, an appointee of former President Obama.
Following the ruling, the DOJ filed a notice of appeal.
In its more recent brief on the case, the DOJ requested that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reverse the ruling, arguing that “decision to seek an indictment against Abrego Garcia for human smuggling was made by career prosecutors based on the evidence, the law, and their firm belief that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Abrego Garcia had committed the offenses charged.” The DOJ added that the ruling made a “dramatic expansion of the power of courts to dismiss serious criminal charges based on subjective assessments of a prosecutor’s motivations and is an unwarranted intrusion into the Executive’s powers and responsibility to protect the public.”
The brief says: “Although his deportation had removed that threat and supported closing the criminal investigation, the deportation now had to be undone, at least temporarily. So the United States had a clear legitimate interest in prosecuting Abrego upon his return.”
It goes on to say that the Trump administration had a “strong interest in confirming that Abrego was a threat to public safety.”
