Mariana Bacayau

Thanks for having me.

The Justice Department had charged him with human smuggling around this time last year after Abrego Garcia had won his deportation case.

That was when the Supreme Court ordered that he be returned to the U.S.

after the government deported him, despite a court order to keep him in the country over fears of gang violence in his native El Salvador.

When he got back, Abrego Garcia was immediately taken into custody.

Those criminal charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop here in Tennessee.

In body camera footage played for the court, Abrego Garcia can be seen driving an SUV with nine other men.

Prosecutors pointed to that as evidence of human smuggling, alleging that Abrego Garcia was paid to drive people who had crossed the border into Texas.

Abrego Garcia's lawyers argued that the government's criminal case was retaliation because of the embarrassment it caused the Trump administration.

After he won his deportation case, he became a sort of galvanizing force for critics of the president's hardline immigration policy.

His lawyers asked the court to dismiss the charges under a vindictive prosecution claim.

I would say yes and no, but it's more yes and maybe.

Essentially, the court found that there was a presumption of vindictive prosecution.

That means not enough evidence for it to be definite that the government's actions were a form of retaliation, but enough to drop the charges.

In his ruling, Judge Waverly Crenshaw took issue with the timeline in particular.

So again, Abrego Garcia was pulled over in 2022, but the government didn't file charges against him until nearly two and a half years later when it became clear the Trump administration had to bring him back to the U.S.

At that point, according to internal memos from the Justice Department, the case became top priority for the DOJ.

And one prosecutor high up in Nashville's U.S.

Attorney's Office asked the DOJ not to prosecute and ended up resigning in protest.

Judge Crenshaw asked tough questions of both sides in court, but he seemed skeptical of prosecutors going back and forth on whether they wanted to keep Obrego Garcia in the U.S.