0:24Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant shown in the provided photo shot by his kin, was obtained by Reuters on April 9, 2025.Abrego Garcia Family via Reuters
On Tuesday, legal counsel for Kilmar Abrego Garcia filed a motion claiming federal prosecutors engaged in “retaliatory and discriminatory prosecution,” asking a court to toss the indictment against their client.
A temporary order issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes lapses Friday, meaning Abrego Garcia could walk free from a Tennessee detention facility—although another judge ruled previously that, upon release, he must be transferred back to Maryland.
The 25-page motion contends that the charges were brought “only because he declined to surrender his due-process protections,” his lawyers wrote.
“The federal authorities have made Mr. Abrego Garcia a target,” the defense team declared.
The Salvadoran citizen was expelled in March to El Salvador’s sprawling CECOT mega-prison—contradicting a 2012 court ruling shielding him from removal because he faced persecution risks. The Trump-era administration insisted he belonged to the MS-13 gang, an allegation he refutes.
In May, U.S. officials flew him back to the United States so he could be tried in Tennessee for allegedly shuttling undocumented immigrants.
According to the memorandum, when Tennessee troopers pulled over their client in 2022, they let him continue without a single citation.
“Three years on, the feds seized Mr. Abrego Garcia—alongside others in comparable immigration situations—during a sweeping show-of-force immigration sweep,” they asserted.
Rather than own up to the unlawful deportation, the state “met it, not with apology or remediation, but with obstinacy,” the brief charged.
“Top brass inside the U.S. administration embarked on a public vendetta: they waged a campaign to punish Mr. Abrego merely for contesting their actions, culminating in the criminal probe underlying the current case,” the filing continues.
The motion concludes that the prosecution is simply retaliation for “his successful challenge to the unlawful removal.”
“That constitutes a fundamental breach of constitutional norms,” they wrote. “Dismissal of the indictment is mandatory.”
Sourse: abcnews.go.com
