Kilmar Abrego Garcia goes to U.S. court to dismiss human smuggling charges
· Toronto Sun
Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the U.S. government accuses of human smuggling, asked a federal judge in Tennessee on Thursday to have the case dismissed.
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Abrego Garcia, mistakenly deported to his home country of El Salvador last year after U.S. officials granted him legal protections in 2019, claims the charges are vindictive after he filed a civil suit against the Trump administration that successfully challenged that removal.
President Donald Trump has made crackdowns on illegal immigration one of the top features of his second term in office.
“Rather than fix its mistake and return Mr. Abrego to the United States, the government fought back at every level of the federal court system. And at every level, Mr. Abrego won,” his lawyers wrote in the request to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, CBS News reported .
“This case results from the government’s concerted effort to punish him for having the audacity to fight back, rather than accept a brutal injustice.”
Prosecution used as ‘revenge’
The lawyers wrote that the prosecution was used as “revenge” after the Maryland resident reversed his deportation and returned to the U.S. after being jailed in the country’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) maximum security prison, which houses inmates involved in organized crime, gang violence, and homicides.
“The unprecedented public pronouncements attacking Mr. Abrego for his successful exercise of constitutional rights by senior cabinet members, leaders of the DOJ, and even the President of the United States, make this the rare case where actual vindictiveness is clear from the record,” they wrote.
Following his deportation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had to show it was making concrete efforts to return him from El Salvador.
The human trafficking charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee’s Putnam County. Abrego Garcia was released without incident.
Crenshaw has said past statements from Trump administration officials “raise cause for concern” and that some evidence against Abrego Garcia “may be vindictive,” reports ABC affiliate WKRN .
Enough evidence
Federal prosecutors said in response that there is enough evidence to move forward with an indictment because they believe he “committed a serious federal crime” and could “prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury.”
The U.S. Justice Department is expected to call three witnesses at Thursday’s hearing, which includes two agents with Homeland Security Investigations who worked on the investigation and a U.S. attorney in the Tennessee judicial district.
“The allegation that a criminal indictment in Tennessee was sought to punish the defendant for his assertions in a civil case in Maryland is not true and cannot be established,” prosecutors argued. “The defendant’s argument, while high on rhetoric, lacks the basic facts to succeed.”