How a Political Vendetta Shaped the Case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Last week, a federal judge in Tennessee dismissed the criminal indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national whose legal saga became a flashpoint in the immigration debate last year. The ruling concluded that the prosecution had been unconstitutionally tainted by vindictiveness. The Justice Department, which plans to appeal, fired back, accusing the judge of putting “politics above public safety.”
The irony was hard to miss. Abrego Garcia may have been guilty of smuggling people across the border, but the case against him—stemming from a 2022 traffic stop that had been quietly closed without charges—was always about something bigger. Evidence of that came from the Trump administration itself, in disclosures that stretched well beyond the narrow scope of the ruling. Perhaps the most telling detail: he could have been deported long ago, if the objective had truly been public safety.
Abrego Garcia became a symbol of illegal migration and the government's hardline approach in March 2025, when the administration mistakenly sent him to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador. Officials admitted the error and conceded that he had a valid withholding of removal, meaning he could not be legally sent back to that country. The U.S. District Court in Maryland ordered the executive branch to “facilitate” his return, a ruling the Supreme Court unanimously upheld.
The ensuing political firestorm far exceeded one person. Lawmakers weighed in: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D–Md.) traveled to El Salvador to meet Abrego Garcia in person. The case dominated headlines for weeks.
By June, Abrego Garcia was back in the United States. The Trump administration, which had claimed it had no legal authority to bring him home, faced an embarrassing loss. But this time, he was under indictment. “We got him out of here,” Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. (Blanche has since been promoted to the top job.) “And a judge in Maryland and many members of Congress…questioned that decision.” So the government, he added, “started…investigating him.”
That admission proved fatal in court. “Blanche's words directly confirm that the Executive Branch reopened the criminal investigation because the Judicial Branch required the Executive Branch to facilitate Abrego's return from El Salvador,” wrote Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. “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.”
But the ruling barely touched on another dimension of vindictiveness in Abrego Garcia's case—one that few people have discussed. It further undercuts the administration's claim that its actions were about public safety rather than politics.
Lost in the coverage: In August, Costa Rica agreed to accept Abrego Garcia. The country has a standing agreement with the U.S. to take deportees who cannot be sent back to their home countries. The federal government initially supported this plan—it even proposed it. But the offer came as part of a plea deal tied to the now-dismissed indictment. When Abrego Garcia refused to plead guilty, the Trump administration pivoted, seeking to punish him another way: by deporting him to Uganda.
Problem: Uganda never agreed to take him. So the government tried Eswatini. “We have not received any communication regarding this person,” said Thabile Mdluli, the country’s spokesperson, after news broke. No deal materialized. The administration then switched to Ghana.
“Ghana is not accepting Abrego Garcia,” Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Ghana’s foreign affairs minister, said in October. “He cannot be deported to Ghana.”
At a court hearing soon after, the government announced it would send Abrego Garcia to Liberia, which agreed on a “temporary” basis. Costa Rica was no longer an option, the administration told the court, because Costa Rica no longer “wish[ed] to receive him.”
That statement took Costa Rica by surprise. “That position that we have expressed in the past,” said Mario Zamora Cordero, the country’s public security minister, in November, “remains valid and unchanged to this day.”
Instead of pursuing a straightforward deportation, the Trump administration has opted to spend taxpayer dollars prolonging the ordeal—not because there is no viable destination, but because officials are holding out for a plan that causes maximum hardship. In his ruling, Judge Crenshaw noted that the government failed to explain its “change in position to remove Abrego and not prosecute him to then prosecute and not remove him.” The question, as he implied, answers itself.