\n<\/p>\n
More than a<\/span> year after Kilmar Abrego Garcia won at the U.S. Supreme Court \u2014 forcing the Trump administration to bring him back from El Salvador \u2014 federal officials can\u2019t seem to decide what, exactly, they want to do with him.<\/p>\n On the one hand, Trump officials continue to insist that Abrego must be deported to Africa<\/a>, recently settling on Liberia. At the same time, the Department of Justice has pressed forward with its prosecution of Abrego for human smuggling \u2014 a criminal case that must be resolved before the government deports him.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t have it both ways,\u201d Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis, who first ordered Abrego\u2019s return to the U.S. and who is still presiding over his immigration case, recently told<\/a> the DOJ. \u201cHe physically needs to be in this country to be prosecuted.\u201d<\/p>\n The criminal case against Abrego stems from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, which, according to federal prosecutors, was proof he was enmeshed in a human smuggling plot. The case was set to go trial in Nashville this year but presiding District Judge Waverly Crenshaw of the Middle District of Tennessee canceled<\/a> the trial date to consider a key question<\/a>: whether Abrego is the target of a \u201cselective and vindictive prosecution.\u201d The answer will determine whether the case moves forward; Crenshaw is expected to rule any day.<\/p>\n Defense attorneys argue that the Trump DOJ brought the charges against Abrego as revenge for his successful legal challenges, which freed him from the notorious Salvadoran prison<\/a> known as CECOT. \u201cThis case results from the government\u2019s concerted effort to punish him for having the audacity to fight back, rather than accept a brutal injustice,\u201d they wrote in their motion to dismiss the case.<\/p>\n Crenshaw has already found some evidence to support these allegations, writing last fall<\/a> that there was a \u201crealistic likelihood of vindictiveness\u201d against Abrego. He pointed to numerous public statements made by top Trump officials, particularly that of then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly Trump\u2019s personal defense attorney, who told Fox News<\/a> that the Justice Department began investigating Abrego after \u201ca judge in Maryland\u201d interfered with Trump\u2019s decision to deport him.<\/p>\n Still, proving their case has been a challenge for Abrego\u2019s defense. The DOJ has refused to turn over evidence that would illuminate its decision-making \u2014 and tracing the prosecution to its roots requires untangling the Tennessee case from a previous probe originating in Baltimore. The Maryland investigation, which was linked to Abrego\u2019s immigration case, probed Abrego\u2019s 2022 traffic stop and stayed open for more than two and a half years, only to be closed after Abrego was shipped to El Salvador.<\/p>\n After Abrego prevailed<\/a> at the Supreme Court, however, the Maryland investigation was suddenly reopened to great fanfare. The Department of Homeland Security sent out press releases<\/a> trumpeting the \u201cbombshell\u201d revelations supposedly derived from the traffic stop \u2013 namely that Abrego was a human smuggler and a member of MS-13. It was in the wake of this publicity that the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in the Middle District of Tennessee began its case, repackaging the evidence from the Baltimore investigation and indicting Abrego in May 2025.<\/p>\n To further probe the government\u2019s motivations, Crenshaw ordered an evidentiary hearing, where the DOJ would be required to present \u201cobjective, on-the-record explanations\u201d for Abrego\u2019s prosecution. If the DOJ could not rebut his previous finding that there was a \u201clikelihood of vindictiveness\u201d against Abrego, he would have to throw out the case.<\/p>\n That hearing took place<\/a> in late February, with lawyers on both sides filing post-hearing briefs earlier this month. In its 24-page filing<\/a>, which contained the word \u201cundisputed\u201d 20 times, the DOJ insisted that it proved once and for all that Abrego\u2019s prosecution was rooted in evidence of criminality rather than revenge. \u201cRegardless of the tale Defendant invites this Court to believe,\u201d wrote Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, \u201cany narrative of animus has been affirmatively disproven by the Government\u2019s undisputed evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n In reality, the testimony offered by the government raised more questions than answers \u2014 while revealing that DOJ higher-ups were involved at every step leading up to Abrego\u2019s indictment. Though Woodward cast the prosecution as one steered by law enforcement officers duty-bound to the evidence and their own moral compass, this was hard to take seriously. Donald Trump, after all, has spent the past 15 months trying to transform the DOJ into his personal law firm, demanding that prosecutors go after his political enemies.<\/p>\n In their own post-hearing brief<\/a>, Abrego\u2019s lawyers argued that the government has \u201ctried to sanitize the origins of this prosecution.\u201d Its story is \u201cat odds with both the documentary record in this case and common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Abrego arrived at<\/span> the hearing on February 26 in a black pea coat, black zip-up sweater, and black shirt. It was a gray, humid morning in downtown Nashville as TV cameras set up outside the federal courthouse plaza. While a line formed at security, Abrego, 30, headed toward the elevators with his legal team and supporters. Crenshaw\u2019s fifth-floor courtroom quickly filled up; Abrego was given headphones to listen to the hearing in Spanish. An overflow area was provided for press.<\/p>\n Representing the federal government was Woodward, a former assistant to Trump who previously helped orchestrate his defense<\/a> in the classified documents case<\/a>. He sat alongside three members of Task Force Vulcan<\/a>, a multiagency body created by the Trump administration to go after international gangs.<\/p>\n Woodward called Rana Saoud, a former special agent at the Nashville office of Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. According to Saoud, who retired last December, she first heard that Abrego had been stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol through an article<\/a> in the conservative Tennessee Star. She did not remember who sent it to her. \u201cI don\u2019t have my phone anymore,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The story was published on April 23, 2025 \u2014 five days after DHS announced its reopening of the Baltimore investigation \u2014 and was heavily based on the government\u2019s claims. While it was not clear when Saoud read the article, she called Robert McGuire<\/a>, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, the following Sunday, April 27. McGuire apparently was not yet aware of the traffic stop or the Baltimore investigation either. He agreed they should take a closer look.<\/p>\n Although Abrego was famous<\/a> by then for his exile to CECOT, Saoud testified that this had no bearing on her actions. \u201cWe\u2019re not waived by political attention or political posturing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n On cross-examination, one of Abrego\u2019s lawyers asked Saoud if she\u2019d seen the DHS press releases publicizing the traffic stop. She said no. Nor did she apparently see Trump boast about it in the press. Saoud said she had \u201cstopped listening to the news. \u2026 I had other priorities to investigate and focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n Saoud conceded that she was not privy to the decision-making process at DOJ. But she insisted that the evidence supported charges against Abrego. \u201cThe facts were leading us towards an individual who was involved in a human smuggling crime,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In a list of witnesses in advance of the hearing, the DOJ had included a second HSI investigator, Special Agent John VanWie, who led the investigation in Baltimore. But since then, Woodward had apparently changed his mind. Rather than calling the man who could explain why his office reopened the investigation into Abrego after the Supreme Court ruling, Woodward went straight to his second and last witness: Assistant U.S. Attorney McGuire.<\/p>\n Wearing a dark<\/span> suit and his hair parted to the side, McGuire took the stand with the air of a seasoned but humble public servant. Once an unsuccessful candidate for local district attorney, McGuire found himself in charge of the Nashville U.S. attorney\u2019s office by chance. He joined the office in 2018, working as a line prosecutor until back-to-back resignations catapulted him to the top just weeks before Trump was inaugurated in 2025. \u201cHere I am, kind of the accidental acting U.S. attorney,\u201d he told the Tennessee Banner<\/a> that February. A few months later, he was in charge of the Abrego prosecution.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d like to get right to the heart of the matter everyone is here for,\u201d Woodward began. \u201cWho made the decision to seek an indictment of Mr. Abrego?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho made the decision to seek an indictment of Mr. Abrego?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cI did,\u201d McGuire said.<\/p>\n \u201cDid Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche direct you to do so?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone at Main Justice?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo sir.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about the White House?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAbsolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n McGuire reiterated what he\u2019d previously written in a sworn affidavit<\/a>, insisting that the decision to prosecute Abrego was his alone. He said he recognized signs of human smuggling in the footage from the traffic stop, which showed Abrego driving eight other Latino men in a van with no luggage, and decided to pursue the case personally.<\/p>\n Yet McGuire\u2019s written narrative contained a key omission. Email records had subsequently revealed that another DOJ prosecutor played an active role \u2014 a man with a reputation<\/a> as Trump\u2019s \u201cbrashest enforcer when it comes to clamping down on US attorneys\u2019 autonomy\u201d: Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh.<\/p>\n Singh, it turned out, had written to McGuire about Abrego\u2019s case on the same Sunday he got the call from Saoud \u2014 the first of several emails from the D.C.-based prosecutor. Singh wanted to meet the next morning with McGuire and two other AUSAs who\u2019d been involved in providing evidence for the Baltimore investigation. There was nothing unusual about this, McGuire maintained. Singh was simply a point person for U.S. attorneys across the country when it came to communicating with the deputy attorney general\u2019s office in Washington. \u201cIf there was a noteworthy case \u2014 if there was an important matter that happened in the Middle District of Tennessee \u2014 he would be my conduit to let them know what was going on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n McGuire insisted that he was in charge of Abrego\u2019s prosecution at every step. His correspondence with Singh was simply intended to provide updates on his work. But Abrego\u2019s lawyers zeroed in on the emails as proof that the prosecution was being driven by officials in D.C. On cross-examination, defense attorney David Patton went through the correspondence one email at a time. The first message concerned a confidential informant who would later testify against Abrego before the grand jury. Singh \u201cknew about that witness before you did,\u201d Patton pointed out. In another, Singh wrote to McGuire thanking him for his work on the case, writing, \u201cIt\u2019s a top priority for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Who was the \u201cus\u201d in this email?<\/p>\n \u201cI presumed it was Main Justice leadership,\u201d McGuire replied.<\/p>\n In another email, Singh pressed McGuire for an update on the timing for a possible indictment even though McGuire had already updated him earlier that day. \u201cHe\u2019s pretty eager here isn\u2019t he?\u201d Patton asked. McGuire demurred. It was pretty typical for the DAG\u2019s office to ask for updates \u201cin any high-profile matter,\u201d he said. Yet \u201chigh-profile\u201d \u2014 a term McGuire repeatedly invoked on the stand \u2014 did not begin to capture the extent of the Trump administration\u2019s particular fixation on Abrego.<\/p>\n Patton also grilled McGuire about his correspondence with his own staff. In one email, McGuire wrote to several members of the Nashville U.S. attorney\u2019s office to provide them with a memo laying out the potential charges against Abrego, noting that he\u2019d heard anecdotally that Blanche and then-Principal Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove<\/a> \u201cwould like Garcia charged sooner rather than later.\u201d According to McGuire, this was merely an attempt to keep his colleagues in Nashville apprised of the situation. \u201cI just wanted to be transparent with my team that I hadn\u2019t been told to do anything but there was some interest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Yet, in the same message, McGuire told the recipients not to put their thoughts on the matter in an email. \u201cIsn\u2019t it true that you didn\u2019t want people putting in writing that they opposed the prosecution?\u201d Patton asked. McGuire said he just preferred to hash things out face to face.<\/p>\n One person, however, had replied in writing: Ben Schrader, chief of the criminal division at the Nashville U.S. attorney\u2019s office, who firmly opposed the prosecution. He sent back a memo of his own, asking McGuire to \u201cplease pass it along to relevant parties in D.C.\u201d McGuire said he didn\u2019t recall if he did. On the day that Abrego was indicted, Schrader resigned<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although McGuire denied ever discussing his decisions with the highest Trump officials, Patton pointed to at least one conversation. Records showed that, on June 6, the same day Abrego was returned from El Salvador, Blanche personally called McGuire. It was a \u201cvery brief phone call,\u201d McGuire said. The deputy attorney general simply wanted to notify him that Abrego was headed back to the country. \u201cI\u2019ll be honest, I don\u2019t totally remember all the things he said.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n