DOJ Asks Appeals Court to Reinstate Charges Against Abrego Garcia

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a federal appeals court to reinstate human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

The charges were dismissed in May by a federal judge in Tennessee, who ruled they were vindictive. The DOJ filed a brief on Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, rejecting the claim of vindictive prosecution. The department stated that career prosecutors made the decision to seek an indictment based on evidence and the law, believing there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

The DOJ also argued that the May court order represented an expansion of judicial power to dismiss criminal charges based on subjective assessments of prosecutorial motives. Abrego Garcia's defense team called the DOJ's statement flat wrong, asserting that the indictment and prosecution were indeed vindictive, supported by evidence presented to the district court. They claimed the case was initiated on White House instructions after Abrego Garcia won a Supreme Court case.

Abrego Garcia was previously deported by the Trump administration and had agreed to go to Costa Rica, a country ready to accept him for a year, according to an immigration attorney who accused Customs and Immigration Enforcement of lying to a judge about the reasons for not sending him there. Abrego Garcia was charged last year with two counts of human smuggling stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee.