Judge tosses federal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia
A federal district judge granted Kilmar Abrego Garcia's motion to dismiss two criminal charges on the grounds his prosecution was vindictive and selective.
Updated on: May 22, 2026 / 3:35 PM EDT / CBS News
Washington — A federal judge in Tennessee on Friday tossed out an indictment charging Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man mistakenly deported by the Trump administration last year, with human smuggling.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw granted Abrego Garcia's effort to dismiss the criminal charges on the ground that the Justice Department's prosecution was vindictive. Crenshaw had already ruled that the Salvadoran man demonstrated that the prosecution may be vindictive, which left it up to the government to rebut that presumption. But in his decision, the judge concluded that prosecutors failed to meet that burden.
The decision is a massive victory for Abrego Garcia, whose immigration case became a flashpoint in President Trump's sweeping immigration crackdown.
Abrego Garcia was charged last year with two counts of human smuggling stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, where he was pulled over by state Highway Patrol and was found to have numerous people in his vehicle. He pleaded not guilty.
The indictment came after Abrego Garcia was removed from the U.S. in March 2025 and flown to El Salvador, where he was initially held at a notorious supermax prison. But an immigration judge had granted Abrego Garcia a legal status that forbade immigration authorities from deporting him to his home country, and a Trump administration official acknowledged his removal to El Salvador was a mistake.