The Trump administration has asked a federal appeals court to reinstate criminal charges against Kilmar Ábrego García that were dismissed in May by a judge who said the prosecution of the man who unwittingly became a symbol of the White House’s mass deportation campaign was “vindictive in nature”.
In a filing to the US sixth circuit court of appeals, the justice department insisted that human smuggling allegations against Ábrego are genuine – and not retaliation for challenging his wrongful deportation to El Salvador in March 2025.
Ábrego’s deportation sent him to the notorious anti-terrorism mega-prison in El Salvador known as Cecot. He was ultimately returned to the US three months later by a federal supreme court order.
“The decision to seek an indictment against Ábrego García for human smuggling was made by career prosecutors based on the evidence, the law, and their firm belief that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Ábrego García had committed the offenses charged,” the justice department said in a statement describing its brief and posted online on Monday.
Ábrego was charged with human smuggling based on a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. But the criminal indictment was dismissed in May by the Nashville-based federal district court judge Waverly David Crenshaw Jr, who said the justice department had acted with “presumptive vindictiveness”.
Crenshaw said the indictment’s timing, statements made by the recently confirmed attorney general, Todd Blanche, and sustained oversight by other top US justice department officials, had “thoroughly tainted” the case.
In its appeal against Crenshaw’s order to the sixth circuit, which handles federal rulings out of Nashville, the justice department accused the judge of “an unwarranted intrusion” into the government’s power – and demanded the appellate court reverse it.
“The evidence in the district court proved that charges were brought against Ábrego García because, in the view of career prosecutors, the evidence conclusively established that he had committed a serious crime, and not for any vindictive motive,” the justice department statement said.
Crenshaw’s order, it said, “marks a dramatic expansion of the power of courts to dismiss serious criminal charges based on subjective assessments of a prosecutor’s motivations and is an unwarranted intrusion into the executive [branch]’s powers and responsibility to protect the public”.
Attorneys for Ábrego told CBS News that the justice department’s appeal was “flat wrong”.
In a statement, they said: “The indictment and prosecution of Ábrego García 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.
“This case was initiated vindictively and on instructions from the White House after our client successfully won his supreme court case”.
Ama Frimpong, chief of services at We Are Casa, an immigration advocacy group representing Ábrego, said in May that the case was “nothing more than a political vendetta”. Frimpong also said that the Trump administration had “brazenly attempted to weaponize the criminal legal system” against Ábrego to “punish him for exposing their unlawful actions”.
Ábrego, 30, fled to the US aged 16 to escape gang extortion in El Salvador, according to court records. He moved to Maryland, where his brother lives as a US citizen. But Ábrego was not authorized to stay there.
He was never arrested or charged with a crime in either the US or El Salvador. He was living with his wife and children, all US citizens, and complying with regular Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) check-ins, when he was detained and deported after the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency.
