A brief-ish history of events leading up to this point:
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was one of hundreds of migrants rounded up by ICE, denied of their due process rights, and dumped into an infamous torture prison in El Salvador, a country overseen by a man who claims he’s the world’s “coolest dictator.”
Abrego Garcia, however, actually still had some legal representation left in the States. A court sided with Garcia and demanded the government return him to the US. First, the Trump DOJ said it wouldn’t. Then it said it couldn’t. The court asked which it was and the government said, “Either? Both?”
Finally, after a lot of outside pressure and internal litigation, the DOJ finally decided to bring Garcia back to the US to finally access his due process rights to challenge his removal. But the DOJ didn’t want to play fair, not after being (somewhat) forced to respect the rights of someone it hoped to never have to hear from ever again.
Upon his return, the DOJ re-opened a long-dead investigation and generated a bunch of criminal charges against him. (The official and unofficial term is “trumped-up charges.”) Then it told Garcia that he could either agree to plead guilty to the charges, spend some time in a US prison, and then be unceremoniously dumped back into El Salvador or he could fight the charges and be deported immediately to Uganda, a war-torn country Garcia has never been to.
The DOJ continues to press its case against Garcia, claiming he is such a dangerous criminal no one should care what happens to him. That viewpoint hasn’t managed to sway the district court and made so little of an impression on the Supreme Court that it upheld the lower court’s ruling.
But that’s not how the US justice system works, which is being made clear repeatedly to the Trump administration, currently being under-served by the only prosecutors still willing to take orders from a despot.
Fortunately, the judge in this case doesn’t need the approval of a despot to keep serving up roadblocks to the administration’s authoritarian aims. In the court’s latest decision [PDF], Judge Barbara Holmes says it’s more likely than not that the DOJ’s prosecution of Garcia is purely vindictive, rather than the regular ebb and flow of criminal justice the Trump DOJ pretends it is. (h/t Joshua Friedman)
Not helping the government’s “this is just regular stuff” case is all the irregular, vindictive stuff said by government, spewing from some of the worst front-mouths Trump has ever decided to appoint to federal office. Here’s how the administration responded to court orders demanding Garcia’s return to the United States:
Mere days after the Supreme Court affirmed the District Court’s injunction, HSI reopened its investigation into Abrego’s November 30, 2022 traffic stop.
[…]
Less than a month later, on May 21, 2025, the Middle District of Tennessee grand jury returned a two-count indictment against Abrego arising primarily from the November 30, 2022 traffic stop. An arrest warrant issued, prompting the United States to return Abrego from El Salvador. Abrego was arrested on June 6, 2025, and brought to this District.
Not content to resurrect a three-year-old traffic stop that resulted in no arrests or citations, government officials then took to the airwaves (social media and otherwise) to presumptively declare Abrego Garcia guilty of human trafficking.
Notably, on the day of and shortly after Abrego’s arrest, several Executive Official Defendants and their subordinates made public statements about Abrego and celebrated the criminal charges against him. For instance, Secretary Noem posted on her X account on the day of Abrego’s arrest that he is “a known MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, and serial domesticabuser.
That same day, Attorney General Bondi announced during a press conference that Abrego would be found guilty, sentenced, and “returned to his home country of El Salvador.” Most tellingly, Attorney General Bondi’s direct report, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, linked Abrego’s criminal charges to Abrego’s civil lawsuit in Maryland. 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.”
Well, that sure looks retaliatory: a government prosecutor stating in public that the government only decided to “investigate” Abrego Garcia after his release had been ordered by a federal court.
The court says this more than just looks like actual vindictiveness.
Actual vindictiveness may be apparent based on the Executive Official Defendants’ and their subordinates’ statements about Abrego from the time he filed his Maryland lawsuit through his arrest in this District. While many of the statements made by the Executive Official Defendants about Abrego raise cause for concern, one stands out amongst the rest.
The statement that “stands out” is the one in bold print above. And the court says DAG Blanche only managed to make things worse for the government by continuing to press this point.
To remove any doubt, Deputy Attorney General Blanche said that the criminal case was brought to return Abrego to the United States, “not [because of] a Judge,” but instead, because of “an arrest warrant issued by a grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee.” This could be direct evidence of vindictiveness.
Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights to bring suit against the Executive Official Defendants, rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct.
Perhaps most damning is the speed with which the government acted, once Abrego Garcia had prevailed in this court, the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court, and finally, the Supreme Court.
Only 58 days passed from the time Abrego filed suit in Maryland to when he was indicted in this District. Or consider the close timing between developments in Abrego’s civil suit and HSI reopening its investigation into him, which may be even more alarming: HSI reopened that investigation, after closing it the month prior, only 24 days after Abrego filed his civil suit, 13 days after he obtained relief in the District Court, and a mere seven days after he prevailed against the Executive Official Defendants on appeal at the Supreme Court.
All of this stands in stark contrast to the 832 days the HSI investigation into Abrego remained pending, without referral to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Tennessee for prosecution, prior to Abrego’s lawsuit against the Executive Official Defendants commenced.
What it looks like is what it is. The government was embarrassed not only by Abrego Garcia’s refusal to remain silent, but by the three consecutive court losses it sustained while weathering weeks of critical coverage from press outlets and online commentators. Once it brought Abrego Garcia back, it made every effort it could to put him back behind bars and onto the fast track for deportation — especially if his final destination would be somewhere he would never voluntarily choose to go.
Now, the government will have to demonstrate that this isn’t exactly what it looks like. Chances are, it won’t be able to do this. But it will still hold the power to do the same thing to other people who likely won’t have the tireless legal advocates willing to ensure the it doesn’t get away with again. A battle will be lost, but the war on migrants is still raging. The government will get the wins it wants. And it will always live to fight another day to ensure the rights it’s supposed to be protecting are ignored whenever they get in the way of what it wants to do.
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