BREAKING: Kilmar Abrego Garcia case DISMISSED for vindictive prosecution

Trump's DOJ picked the "person first and the crime second," a federal judge found.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia in August 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

All Rise News covered Abrego’s case across the country from the beginning.

Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to sustain coverage of the major cases.

A federal judge dismissed the criminal indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia for vindictive prosecution on Friday, capping off the immigrant’s extraordinary successes in thwarting the Trump administration’s relentless efforts to deport and prosecute him since his unlawful expulsion from his Maryland home last year.

“Then-Attorney General Robert H. Jackson warned his fellow prosecutors long ago of the danger of picking the person first and the crime second,” U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw wrote in the introduction of his 32-page ruling, referring to the late Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor.

Quoting Justice Jackson’s remarks from “The Federal Prosecutor,” Crenshaw wrote: “Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.”

“That is the situation here,” the ruling states.

‘A politicized, vindictive White House’

In March 2025, the Trump administration illegally spirited Abrego from his Maryland home the United States to his native El Salvador, where a court order had blocked his return.

Abrego’s attorneys fought his expulsion and detention in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), described by one federal judge as one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere. Abrego said that he was tortured there, and he successfully sued for his release at every level of the U.S. federal judiciary. He has won every significant legal battle in court ever since against the full weight and force of the Trump administration.

“Justice is a big word and an even bigger promise to fulfill; and I am grateful that today, justice has taken a step forward,” Abrego said in a statement.

Abrego’s criminal defense attorney Sean Hecker called his client a “victim of a politicized, vindictive White House and its lawyers at what used to be an independent Justice Department.” 

“We are so pleased that he is a free man,” Hecker told All Rise News. “Justifiably so. As this Administration continually chips away at our democracy, we remain grateful for an independent judiciary that will dispassionately apply binding precedent to the facts.”

‘Succeeded in vindicating his rights’

Last year, Abrego’s attorneys successfully challenged his unlawful expulsion all the way up to the Supreme Court, which ruled 9-0 that the government must “facilitate” his release.

Instead of returning Abrego to his family in Maryland, the Trump Justice Department criminally charged him last year, accusing him of smuggling immigrants in November 2022. The charges related to a more than three-year-old traffic stop, in which a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer released him without a ticket. The Department of Homeland Security subsequently closed the investigation.

Judge Crenshaw found that the Trump Justice Department’s renewed investigation arose from an effort to punish Abrego for vindicating his right to due process.

“The Court does not reach its conclusion lightly,” Crenshaw wrote. “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 Executive Branch closed its investigation on the November 2022 traffic stop. Only after Abrego succeeded in vindicating his rights did the Executive Branch reopen that investigation. What the Government labels as ‘new evidence’ was not new as a matter of law.”

In an accompanying order, Judge Crenshaw removed the restrictions of Abrego’s pre-trial release, lifting his electronic monitoring and detention inside his brother’s home, allowing him to be reunited with his wife and children.

The Trump Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment, but it is unlikely to give up its pursuit of Abrego without an appeal.

As the criminal case proceeded, the Trump administration sought to deport him to four African nations to which he had no connection, including Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and Liberia. A different federal judge stopped each of those efforts, finding that there was no valid order of deportation authorizing it.

Read the full ruling here.

This is a breaking and developing story, which will be updated later in the day.