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The Trump administration has spent the past year doggedly targeting a Maryland father named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who gained fame after the Justice Department admitted to mistakenly sending him to El Salvador’s CECOT megaprison last spring. The Supreme Court demanded the administration return Abrego Garcia to the United States, and Donald Trump complied after initial reluctance that verged on a constitutional crisis. Ever since, Trump’s government has sought to make an example of Abrego Garcia to demonstrate, both by seeking to deport him again and by cooking up a highly dubious indictment, that defying this president will result only in further recriminations. Abrego Garcia’s story, which has become emblematic of the unleashed retribution of the president’s second term, finally took a happy turn last week, after the judge in that prosecution acknowledged what was obvious for all to see: Abrego Garcia had been targeted not based on any crime, but for having stood up to the president and having sought to push back against Trump’s horrifying deportation program.

After analyzing the DOJ’s bad-faith efforts over the course of the past 12 months, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw called out the government’s motive in no uncertain terms. In a rare move, Crenshaw dismissed the criminal indictment after declaring the prosecution against Abrego Garcia a blatantly tainted investigation “with a vindictive motive.”

Successfully proving selective prosecution is notoriously difficult—judges rarely grant it. So when it came to Abrego Garcia’s case, Crenshaw, an Obama appointee, spared no detail, meticulously going through the timeline of events that had led to the indictment, starting with a 2022 traffic stop at the heart of the case, when Abrego Garcia was questioned by Tennessee police for suspected human smuggling. The incident was referred to the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, but ultimately the agencies had declined to prosecute. However, in 2025, the DOJ was suddenly interested in this traffic stop at the very same time it was embroiled in a nasty legal battle over returning Abrego Garcia to the U.S.; this followed his filing of a civil lawsuit challenging his deportation to CECOT, which had happened despite a court order demanding he be allowed to stay in the country.

Abrego Garcia’s story became a political flash point, with U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveling to El Salvador to visit the Maryland resident and press for his release. Just this month, FBI Director Kash Patel, in an attempt to defend himself against charges of alcohol abuse, attacked Van Hollen for that visit, telling the senator, “The only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gangbanging rapist was you.”

Crenshaw thoroughly debunked the administration’s ongoing narrative about Abrego Garcia. “The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution,” the judge wrote. Crenshaw explained that nothing had prevented the government from looking into Abrego Garcia’s 2022 traffic stop if it had legitimate concerns about criminal activity; instead, he noted, the incident was used as a legal weapon to fight against Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit and keep him out of the U.S. This targeting went all the way to the top of the DOJ. Crenshaw revealed that a deputy for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had been in close contact with the Homeland Security Investigations agent leading the indictment against Abrego Garcia; the two........

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