US seeks to revive criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia

The administration of United States President Donald Trump is seeking to revive criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man whose wrongful deportation became a source of embarrassment for US immigration authorities.

The US Department of Justice asked a federal appeals court late on Monday to throw out a previous ruling by a judge that slammed the administration’s prosecution of Abrego Garcia as a form of political retaliation.

In his May ruling, US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw found the government’s efforts to bring criminal charges against Abrego Garcia to be an “abuse of prosecuting power”.

Federal prosecutors argued in a brief filed with the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals that Crenshaw’s ruling was flawed in a push to revive criminal charges the Trump administration brought against Abrego Garcia after being forced to return him to the US.

The Salvadoran national was brought back to the US after the government admitted that it had wrongfully deported him to El Salvador, where he was held in a detention facility that was operated by the Salvadoran government and that was notorious for abusive conditions and alleged use of torture.

The Trump administration initially fought efforts to return the 31-year-old Abrego Garcia to the US, even after admitting that he had been wrongfully deported despite a 2019 order from an immigration judge that he had a “well-founded fear” of being targeted in El Salvador.

The administration then filed criminal charges against Abrego Garcia when he arrived back in the US, accusing him of human trafficking.

Crenshaw found that there was evidence of “presumptive vindictiveness” on the part of the US government and that the charges would not have been brought if Abrego Garcia’s case had not been a public setback for the government.

Abrego Garcia has previously said that he is willing to agree to be deported to Costa Rica. But the Trump administration has instead fought to have him deported to the African nation of Liberia, to which he has no connection and where he would be far from friends and family.