Kilmar Abrego Garcia will get an additional hearing thanks to a Federal Judge

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WASHINGTON — Alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia should receive another court hearing, a federal judge ruled Friday, after the US Department of Justice likely engaged in a “vindictive” human trafficking prosecution in an effort to deport the Salvadoran national.

Nashville US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ordered an additional hearing after determining a motion from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers presented “evidence of vindictiveness” in the DOJ’s decision to bring the deportee back from El Salvador to the US to face trafficking charges in June.

A Maryland federal judge had ordered Abrego Garcia’s return to the US after he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador on April 4, but DOJ attorneys in subsequent court filings argued they had complied with portions of the ruling upheld by the Supreme Court.

The timeline of the feds’ prosecution “suggests that Abrego’s prosecution may stem from retaliation by the DOJ and DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] due to Abrego’s successful challenge of his unlawful deportation in Maryland,” Crenshaw wrote in his 16-page order.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in particular “linked Abrego’s criminal charges to Abrego’s civil lawsuit in Maryland,” the judge noted, referencing a June 2025 interview on Fox News.

“Strikingly, during a television interview Deputy Attorney General Blanche revealed that the government started ‘investigating’ Abrego after ‘a judge in Maryland … questioned’ the government’s decision, found that it ‘had no right to deport him,’ and ‘accus[ed] [the government] of doing something wrong,’” he wrote.

“The Court holds that the totality of events creates a sufficient evidentiary basis to conclude that there is a ‘realistic likelihood of vindictiveness’ that entitles Abrego to discovery and requires an evidentiary hearing.”

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