May 24, 2026
It (the indictment) alleged that Abrego and his co-conspirators obtained financial payments from the undocumented individuals for unlawfully transporting them into and around the United States.
The indictment also alleged Abrego was "a member and associate of the transnational criminal organization ... [known as] MS-13,” which it describes as "a criminal enterprise engaged in ... acts and threats involving murder, extortion, narcotics trafficking, firearms trafficking, alien smuggling, and money laundering.”
Abrego "used his status in MS-13 to further his criminal activity” over the life of the criminal conspiracy during which he and co-conspirators "knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens ... many of whom were MS-13 members and associates,” according to the indictment.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. granted Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss, saying "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.”
Within days after the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of Abrego from El Salvador, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reopened the closed investigation of a Nov. 30, 2022, traffic stop of Abrego in Tennessee. Less than a month after that, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Abrego and brought him back to the United States to answer the indictment, the judge said.
Senior DOJ official Todd Blanche, who is now acting U.S. attorney general, had made public statements indicating that the federal government started investigating Abrego after a judge in Maryland questioned the government’s decision to deport him. The court previously held that 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,” and that Blanche directly tied the investigation "to Abrego’s Maryland suit,” Crenshaw said.
The reopening of the concluded investigation "is the source of the vindictiveness,” he said.
Quoting a prior legal precedent, the judge said a prosecutor’s "exercise of coercive power must be impartial ... evenhanded, [and] applied without favoritism or bias.”S.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
10:35 AM
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