Justice Department appeals dismissal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia smuggling case

The Justice Department has taken its fight over Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the federal appeals courts, challenging a ruling that threw out the Tennessee human smuggling case on selective and vindictive prosecution grounds. U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw found on May 22 that the government had abused its prosecuting power and said the case would not have been brought absent Abrego Garcia’s successful legal challenge to his removal to El Salvador.

The appeal, filed Monday by federal prosecutor Robert McGuire, sends the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit and keeps alive a dispute that has become a test of how far prosecutors can go after a defendant who beat back an immigration removal order. The government has called Crenshaw’s ruling wrong and dangerous, while Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have argued the case reflected retaliation from a politicized White House and an independent Justice Department in name only.

The criminal case grew out of a November 2022 traffic stop on I-40 in Tennessee, when state troopers pulled over a van carrying Abrego Garcia and eight other Latino men who had no luggage. He was not charged or arrested at the stop, which lasted more than an hour. Homeland Security Investigations opened a probe in December 2022 and later closed it about two weeks after Abrego Garcia was deported in March 2025, despite a 2019 immigration court order barring his removal to El Salvador because he could face persecution there.

That deportation set off the broader legal fight. The Trump administration first described it as an administrative error, then publicly claimed Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, an allegation he denies. He was sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison and returned to the United States in June 2025 after court orders requiring the government to facilitate his return. Prosecutors later charged him with human smuggling and conspiracy, alleging he accepted money to transport people who were in the United States illegally from Texas to Maryland.

Crenshaw said the investigation was reopened in April 2025 after the Supreme Court largely upheld a lower-court order requiring federal officials to arrange Abrego Garcia’s return. He pointed to statements by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and the timing of the indictment as evidence that the prosecution was retaliatory. The administration had previously touted the charges at a press conference where Pam Bondi said, “This is what American justice looks like.”

The appeal now places that vindictive-prosecution finding before the 6th Circuit. Its ruling could determine not only whether the case is revived, but also how much room federal prosecutors have when a criminal case follows a contested deportation and a defendant’s successful court challenge to executive power.