The lead prosecutor in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s human smuggling case acknowledged Thursday that he thought it was possible the charges would be viewed as vindictive, but he decided charging him was “the right thing to do.” 

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported to a supermax prison in his home country last year, is seeking to have his charges tossed on the grounds of vindictive prosecution. His legal team has argued that he has been unfairly singled out by the U.S. government as a result of a civil lawsuit he filed against the Trump administration successfully challenging that removal. Abrego Garcia was flown back to the U.S. in June 2025 to face the smuggling charges.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, who is presiding over Abrego Garcia’s criminal case, has already ruled that the Salvadoran man demonstrated that his prosecution may be vindictive, leaving it up to the government to rebut that presumption. He allowed Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to collect material from the government.

In a nearly six-hour hearing in Nashville on Thursday, prosecutors and members of Abrego Garcia’s defense team questioned two government witnesses who were called to the stand. The hearing focused primarily on the timeline of when the Justice Department chose to indict Abrego Garcia, and whether anybody at the White House, the Justice Department or the Department of Homeland Security was directly involved. 

Acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire — who is leading the prosecution — acknowledged that Abrego Garcia was indicted long after the 2022 traffic stop that was used to justify the smuggling charges, saying he expected to be asked “why now?” He added that he expected a potential vindictive prosecution allegation from Abrego Garcia’s defense team, and that factored into his decision. 

But McGuire said he decided to bring charges because “the evidence pointed to Abrego Garcia having committed a crime.” He also insisted it was his decision to prosecute Abrego Garcia and no one else’s, adding that no one instructed him to do so or directed him to seek an indictment. 

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia brought up internal emails from a high-level Justice Department official that suggested there was significant interest in charging Abrego Garcia after he challenged his deportation, including one that referred to the case as a “top priority.” 

Rana Saoud, a former Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge who investigated Abrego Garcia, also testified at the hearing that she learned about the November 2022 traffic stop in April 2025, a month after Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador.

Saoud stood firm that she never received any pressure to “make this case happen,” and said that Abrego Garcia’s deportation case “did not impact her decision” to investigate him.

The hearing follows a nearly yearlong back-and-forth between Abrego Garcia’s attorneys and the government.  

Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March 2025 after he was arrested by immigration agents, even though he had been granted legal protection in 2019 that prevented immigration authorities from deporting him to his home country because of likely persecution from local gangs. A federal immigration official later acknowledged his removal was an “error.”

A federal judge in Maryland presiding over his civil case had ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return from a Salvadoran mega-prison known as CECOT, and the decision was upheld by the Supreme Court. But the Trump administration resisted doing so for weeks and eventually brought Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. last June to face human smuggling charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, when Abrego Garcia was pulled over by state Highway Patrol for speeding. Abrego Garcia told police he and the nine passengers in the car had been working at a construction site in St. Louis, Missouri. A report from the Department of Homeland Security about the incident said Abrego Garcia was suspected of human trafficking, but he was not arrested or charged with any crime. 

Separately, Abrego Garcia is fighting in federal court in Maryland to avoid being deported a second time.

Abrego Garcia is now seeking to have the criminal case against him dropped, which his lawyers say is part of a “retribution campaign” waged by the government. They accused senior administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi, of attacking Abrego Garcia publicly in an effort to discredit and punish him.

Abrego Garcia’s legal team also argued that the indictment returned by a federal grand jury last May was “riddled with inflammatory, irrelevant — and, it has turned out, thinly supported — allegations.”

“The unprecedented public pronouncements attacking Mr. Abrego for his successful exercise of constitutional rights by senior cabinet members, leaders of the DOJ, and even the President of the United States, make this the rare case where actual vindictiveness is clear from the record,” they wrote.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued that his indictment was sought as “revenge” against him for suing the government over his removal to El Salvador last year.

“As a matter of timing, it is clear that it was that lawsuit — and its effects on the government — that prompted the government to reevaluate the 2022 traffic stop and bring this case,” they wrote.

Defendants face a high bar for successfully proving a prosecution is vindictive.

In response to Abrego Garcia’s effort, federal prosecutors said they decided to move to indict Abrego Garcia because they believe he “committed a serious federal crime” and could “prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury.”

“The allegation that a criminal indictment in Tennessee was sought to punish the defendant for his assertions in a civil case in Maryland is not true and cannot be established. The defendant’s argument, while high on rhetoric, lacks the basic facts to succeed,” prosecutors argued.