US judge throws out Kilmar Abrego Garcia smuggling case…

A United States federal judge has tossed out the indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, finding that the case would not have gone forward had he not taken legal action over his deportation.

US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ruled on Friday that the Department of Justice revived a human smuggling investigation linked to a 2022 traffic stop only after Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, filed suit.

“The court does not reach its conclusion lightly,” Crenshaw wrote. “The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution.”

Abrego Garcia became a prominent figure last year in President Donald Trump’s push against illegal migration. He was removed to El Salvador and placed in a mega prison even though an earlier court order had barred US authorities from sending him back there because of fears he could face persecution.

The Trump administration later brought him back to the United States in June of that same year. By then, prosecutors had already obtained a criminal indictment accusing him of human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling.

Abrego Garcia denied the charges and maintained that the prosecution was payback for his lawsuit seeking his return to the United States from El Salvador.

In dismissing the indictment, Crenshaw said the sequence of events was key to the court’s finding of a “presumption of vindictiveness”. The judge noted that Homeland Security had known about the traffic stop two years earlier and had closed the matter when Abrego Garcia was deported. The case was reopened only after the US Supreme Court ordered that he be returned from El Salvador.

His deportation breached a 2019 immigration court order that had protected him from being sent to his home country. That order followed a judge’s finding that he was at risk from a gang that had targeted his family.

Although Abrego Garcia is back in the United States with his relatives, Trump officials have said he will not be allowed to stay. They have also vowed to remove him again, this time to a third country where he has no ties.