The Justice Department is asking the Sixth Circuit to reinstate human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, arguing a Tennessee judge overstepped by calling the prosecution vindictive.
The Justice Department filed an opening brief Monday asking a federal appeals court to reinstate human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national at the center of one of the most closely watched deportation fights of the Trump administration. The filing challenges a May ruling by U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr., who threw out the two-count indictment and declared the prosecution vindictive. The government argues the judge overstepped his authority and wrongly substituted his own judgment for that of career prosecutors.
The case traces back to a November 2022 traffic stop on a Tennessee highway, where state troopers pulled over Abrego Garcia and found multiple people in his vehicle. He was initially let go with a warning. Federal prosecutors later secured a grand jury indictment in May 2025 charging him with conspiracy to transport illegal immigrants for financial gain and unlawfully transporting them.
In March 2025, before the indictment, Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in a removal that the administration later acknowledged was an error. After courts ordered his return to the United States, prosecutors reopened the criminal investigation that had been shelved following his removal. The government says the decision to indict came after new evidence emerged and was made by career prosecutors, not political appointees.
In May, Crenshaw dismissed the charges, ruling that the Justice Department brought the case in retaliation for Abrego Garcia's successful legal challenge to his deportation. The judge said the evidence showed the government would not have prosecuted him absent that lawsuit. The ruling effectively found that the executive branch punished a defendant for exercising his right to fight his removal in court.
The Justice Department appealed the dismissal in June, and Monday's filing lays out the full legal argument for why the lower court got it wrong. The 68-page brief tells the Sixth Circuit that the district court did not follow Supreme Court and Sixth Circuit precedent and that the dismissal represents a dramatic expansion of judicial power over federal prosecutions.
The government's brief rejects the vindictive prosecution theory outright. Prosecutors maintain that career attorneys believed Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and that his return to the United States would pose a threat to the public. The brief notes that while the deportation removed that threat and supported closing the criminal investigation at the time, the court-ordered return changed the calculus, giving the United States a clear legitimate interest in prosecuting him.
The decision to seek the indictment, the Justice Department said, was made by career prosecutors based on the evidence, the law, and their firm belief that there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Abrego Garcia committed the offenses charged. The department also pointed out that the acting U.S. attorney who initiated the case had no personal interest in the removal lawsuit, undercutting any claim of retaliation.
The brief warns that letting the ruling stand would hand courts sweeping new power to dismiss serious criminal charges based on subjective assessments of a prosecutor's motivations, an unwarranted intrusion into the executive branch's authority and responsibility to protect the public.
Abrego Garcia's defense team called the Justice Department's position flat wrong, insisting the evidence before the district court established the prosecution was vindictive. The defense noted that the government refused to call the actual decision makers, including Attorney General Todd Blanche, to testify under oath about why the charges were brought.
His attorneys have maintained that the White House pushed for the case after Abrego Garcia won at the Supreme Court, and that the indictment was punishment for successfully challenging the botched removal. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The Sixth Circuit has not yet ruled on the appeal. Abrego Garcia's attorneys will have an opportunity to respond as the case moves forward, and the court will decide whether Crenshaw's dismissal stands or the prosecution can proceed.
Separately, Abrego Garcia is fighting a second legal battle in Maryland, where immigration authorities have sought to deport him to Liberia. A federal judge has temporarily blocked that effort for now. The dual fights mean the case will continue generating headlines regardless of how the appeals court rules, and the Sixth Circuit's decision could set an important precedent on how far judges can go in second-guessing federal prosecutors.
The Justice Department is asking the Sixth Circuit to reinstate human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, arguing a Tennessee judge overstepped by calling the prosecution vindictive.
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