(AFP) – A US federal judge dismissed a criminal case on Friday filed against a Salvadoran man at the center of a row over President Donald Trump’s crackdown on migrants. US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ruled that the indictment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the Trump administration’s Justice Department was “an abuse of prosecuting power.”
Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident married to an American woman, was among more than 200 people sent to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison in March of last year. The Salvadoran man had been living in the United States under protected legal status since 2019, when a judge ruled he should not be deported because he could be harmed in his home country. Justice Department lawyers admitted that Abrego Garcia had been wrongly deported due to an “administrative error.”
After his return to the United States in June, Abrego Garcia was detained again in the southern state of Tennessee and charged with human smuggling. Abrego Garcia had sought to have those charges tossed on the grounds they were a vindictive prosecution brought because of his legal efforts to avoid deportation. In dismissing the human smuggling charges, Crenshaw said “the evidence before this court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power.”
“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,” the judge said. Despite the victory in his criminal case, Abrego Garcia still faces potential deportation by the Trump administration. A different federal judge has temporarily blocked him from being deported while legal proceedings continue.
Abrego Garcia’s case has become a lightning rod for opponents of Trump’s efforts to carry out mass deportations. The 79-year-old president has made combating illegal immigration a top priority of his second term, pressing for the deportation of millions of undocumented migrants. But his program has been hampered by numerous court rulings on the grounds that those targeted must be able to assert their due process rights.
© 2024 AFP
