Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador only to be brought back to the U.S. to face smuggling charges, asked a federal judge in Nashville on Tuesday to dismiss his indictment, calling it a “vindictive and selective prosecution” by the Trump administration.
The attorneys claimed the Trump administration is only prosecuting Abrego Garcia for alleged human smuggling crimes because he challenged his deportation to El Salvador, where he was initially held at the notorious mega-prison known as CECOT. His lawyers have said their client was beaten at that prison before being transferred to a lower-level security facility.
Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally in 2011 at age 16 and was granted legal protection from being deported to his home country of El Salvador in 2019. But he was still arrested by immigration officials and deported there earlier this year.
While the Trump administration initially conceded in federal court that his deportation to El Salvador had been a mistake, it has since sought to undermine Abrego Garcia’s case in the court of public opinion, accusing him of being a gang member, highlighting domestic violence allegations and charging him with smuggling.
Abrego Garcia has remained in pre-trial detention since he was flown back to the U.S. in early June. The Justice Department has alleged in its criminal indictment that before his deportation to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia transported immigrants, including minors, who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally as part of a smuggling conspiracy.
One of the main pieces of evidence cited by prosecutors is a 2022 traffic stop during which Tennessee troopers stopped Abrego Garcia as he was driving nine people without any luggage across state lines. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said it was telling that the federal government did not prosecute him until after his deportation, which gained widespread national attention.
“Indeed, the only possible explanation for the timing of the charges here is that the government chose to use this prosecution to punish Mr. Abrego for exercising his right to challenge the violations of due process that led to his unconstitutional deportation, incarceration, and torture in El Salvador,” the lawyers said in a legal filing.
“This, coupled with the government’s statements clearly showing the intent to retaliate against Mr. Abrego for pursuing civil remedies for his illegal deportation, unquestionably establishes discriminatory intent,” the filing continued.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said the Trump administration had “gone to extreme lengths to make a criminal case,” including by using a convicted smuggler who has been deported five times as its “star cooperator.” They said the witness was getting lenient treatment from the government in exchange for his cooperation, even though he was purportedly the head of a smuggling business and Abrego Garcia was “allegedly a mere driver.”
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers are also asking the federal court in Nashville to order their client’s release from pre-trial detention once a stay on that order lapses on Friday, Aug. 22. While the court ordered Abrego Garcia’s pre-trial release earlier this summer, it paused that order after his lawyers expressed concerns that their client would be immediately detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and processed for deportation.
If he’s released, the lawyers asked the court to give Abrego Garcia 48 hours to report to pre-trial supervision in Maryland. If there’s a release hearing, the lawyers asked the court to order the U.S. Marshals Service to transport Abrego Garcia from the court back to the detention facility where he’s being held, so he can be released from there. The attorneys said they’ve hired a private security group to take Abrego Garcia from Tennessee to Maryland.
In July, a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia to Maryland, where he lived with his U.S. citizen wife and child, so he can be supervised by ICE there. She also blocked ICE from immediately re-detaining him in Tennessee and from deporting him without some degree of notice, but did not forbid the possibility of the agency re-arresting him in Maryland.
CBS News reached out to representatives for the Department of Justice asking for comment on Tuesday’s legal filings.
In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Abrego Garcia “will never walk America’s streets again,” calling him a “gang member and human trafficker.”
