Federal judge dismisses indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia — rules prosecutors were ‘vindictive’
A federal judge on Friday dismissed a criminal indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old man living in Maryland who was wrongly deported to El Salvador last year, calling the prosecution “vindictive and selective.”
“Then-Attorney General Robert H. Jackson warned his fellow prosecutors long ago of the danger of picking the person first and the crime second … That is the situation here,” U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw, who was appointed by President Barack Obama to the federal bench, wrote in an opinion filed Friday.
Abrego, as he is identified in court documents, entered the United States illegally as a teen. He was deported to an El Salvador prison in March, despite a 2019 order issued by an immigration judge that barred his deportation to the country he said he fled under fear of gang violence.
Abrego fought the deportation, and the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the federal government to “facilitate” his return to the United States in April. The government then reopened an investigation stemming from a two-year-old Tennessee traffic stop, and a grand jury returned a two-count human smuggling indictment against Abrego in June.
Abrego pleaded not guilty to the charges and sought to dismiss them, alleging they were brought in retaliation for his high-profile, successful fight against his deportation.
On Friday, Crenshaw agreed. [Continue reading…]