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The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court Monday to reinstate human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia — the Maryland-based Salvadoran man whose wrongful deportation to El Salvador's CECOT megaprison in 2025 made him the most visible symbol of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign and its consequences — in a legal filing that directly challenges a Tennessee federal judge's May ruling that the prosecution was an unconstitutional act of retaliation against a man who successfully sued the government to win his return.

In an opening brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, the Department of Justice denied that the prosecution was vindictive, arguing that U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr.'s May 22 dismissal was "erroneous at every step." The department said it had "multiple legitimate bases to prosecute" Abrego Garcia and that the decision to seek an indictment was made by career prosecutors "based on the evidence, the law, and their firm belief that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that he committed the offenses charged — two counts of human smuggling stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, in which state Highway Patrol officers pulled Abrego Garcia over for speeding and found him transporting multiple men without luggage.

The filing directly addresses what has been the prosecution's most damaging vulnerability: public statements by Attorney General Todd Blanche expressing hostility toward Abrego Garcia before charges were filed, which Judge Crenshaw cited as evidence of executive-branch animus tainting the charging decision. The DOJ's brief argued that even if Blanche had expressed such animus, the decision to prosecute rested with Robert McGuire — the career prosecutor who led the Tennessee district office where the charges were brought — who "had no stake" in Abrego Garcia's prior civil challenge to his deportation. "Even if Blanche had expressed animus," the brief said, "McGuire's independent decision to prosecute would break any causal chain to Blanche's statements."

Abrego Garcia's defense team rejected the government's framing in unusually direct terms. In a statement to CBS News, his attorneys called the DOJ's position "flat wrong," saying "the indictment and prosecution of Abrego Garcia was, in fact, vindictive; the evidence before the district court established just that; and the proof was clear notwithstanding the DOJ's refusal to call the actual decision makers, including AG Blanche, to testify under oath." They added: "This case was initiated vindictively and on instructions from the White House after our client successfully won his Supreme Court case."

The Supreme Court case to which they refer is the central thread connecting every phase of the Abrego Garcia saga. He entered the United States illegally from El Salvador in 2011 and settled in Maryland, where he later married a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him "withholding of removal" — a form of protection that legally barred his deportation to El Salvador — based on credible safety concerns related to a gang that had targeted his family. In March 2025, the Trump administration deported him to El Salvador's CECOT facility alongside a group of other deportees, despite the 2019 court order. Facing a legal challenge and mounting public pressure, the administration initially insisted it could not retrieve him. The Supreme Court ruled in April 2025 that the government must "facilitate" his return, and he re-entered the United States in June 2025.

Within weeks of his return, federal prosecutors in Tennessee filed a criminal indictment on the 2022 traffic stop incident — charges that had not been brought during the three years since the stop took place. A DHS agent subsequently testified at a pretrial hearing that he had not begun investigating the 2022 incident until after the Supreme Court ordered Abrego Garcia's return. Judge Crenshaw, finding that sequence dispositive, ruled in May that "the objective evidence shows that, absent Abrego's successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution," and dismissed the charges as an unconstitutional exercise of prosecutorial power driven by vindictive motive. "The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power," Crenshaw wrote.

The administration separately pursued a second deportation. After Abrego Garcia returned to the United States, ICE detained him again and sought to deport him to Liberia — a country to which he has no connection — under the same third-country deportation framework the administration has applied to other migrants whose home countries it cannot easily use as deportation destinations. A federal judge in Maryland blocked that effort, barring the government from rearresting him while litigation continued. The Maryland case and the Tennessee criminal case have proceeded on parallel tracks, with each representing a different dimension of the administration's sustained legal effort to remove a man whose return it was ordered by the Supreme Court to facilitate.

The 6th Circuit appeal will now determine whether the human smuggling charges can be revived. The outcome will hinge on whether the appeals court agrees with the DOJ's argument that career prosecutors exercised independent judgment insulated from executive-branch hostility, or with Judge Crenshaw's finding that the timing and context of the charges — brought only after the Supreme Court intervened and never pursued in the three years the evidence existed — establishes the kind of vindictive motive that the Constitution prohibits. If the 6th Circuit reinstates the charges, Abrego Garcia would face trial; if it upholds the dismissal, the criminal case would effectively end, leaving only the Maryland deportation litigation active. Either outcome will likely be appealed, extending a legal saga that has already produced one Supreme Court ruling, a dismissal finding "abuse of prosecuting power," and an administration-wide effort to remove a man that federal courts have repeatedly blocked.