Washington — A federal judge in Tennessee on Friday tossed out an indictment charging Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man mistakenly deported by the Trump administration last year, with human smuggling.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw granted Abrego Garcia’s effort to dismiss the criminal charges on the ground that the Justice Department’s prosecution was vindictive.
The decision is a massive victory for Abrego Garcia, whose immigration case became a flashpoint in President Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
Abrego Garcia was charged last year with two counts of human smuggling stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, where he was pulled over by state Highway Patrol and was found to have numerous people in his vehicle. He pleaded not guilty.
The indictment came after Abrego Garcia was removed from the U.S. in March 2025 and flown to El Salvador, where he was initially held at a notorious supermax prison. But an immigration judge had granted Abrego Garcia a legal status that forbade immigration authorities from deporting him to his home country, and a Trump administration official acknowledged his removal to El Salvador was a mistake.
Abrego Garcia filed a civil lawsuit in Maryland challenging his deportation, and a federal judge ordered the Trump administration in April 2025 to facilitate his return back to the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security, however, resisted doing so for months, but eventually returned him to the U.S. to face criminal charges.
He has since been intertwined in civil and criminal legal fights, and held on separate occasions by federal authorities in Tennessee and immigration officials in Maryland. He has remained out of immigration custody for several months while his cases proceeded.
