Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys accused federal prosecutors on Tuesday of “vindictive and selective prosecution” in a motion seeking to dismiss the criminal charges against him.
Abrego Garcia could be released from Tennessee criminal custody on Friday, when U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes’s temporary stay is set to expire. This comes after a separate judge ruled last month that Abrego Garcia must be returned to Maryland if he is released.
In the 25-page filing, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued that the government charged him “because he refused to acquiesce in the government’s violation of his due process rights.”
MORE: Justice Department investigating 2022 Abrego Garcia traffic stop: Sources
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been singled out by the United States government,” his attorneys said.
The Salvadoran native was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which he denies.
He was brought back to the U.S. in May to face charges in Tennessee of allegedly transporting undocumented migrants.
In the filing on Tuesday, the attorneys said that Abrego Garcia was “sent on his way without so much as a traffic ticket” after the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped their client in 2022.
“Yet three years later, unrelatedly, the government picked Mr. Abrego up off the street—along with others with similar immigration status—as part of a shock-and-awe immigration enforcement push,” they said.
MORE: Timeline: Wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador
After Abrego Garcia’s wrongful removal, the attorneys said the government “responded not with contrition, or with any effort to fix its mistake, but with defiance.”
“A group of the most senior officials in the United States sought vengeance: they began a public campaign to punish Mr. Abrego for daring to fight back, culminating in the criminal investigation that led to the charges in this case,” they said.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said in their filing the government is using the criminal case to punish their client for “successfully fighting his unlawful removal.”
“That is a constitutional violation of the most basic sort,” they said. “The indictment must be dismissed.”
