Trump Won’t Stop Trying to Punish Kilmar Abrego Garcia

ALMOST A YEAR after Kilmar Abrego Garcia was first targeted by the U.S. government as part of its violent mass deportation campaign, the Trump administration is still not done punishing him.

The 30-year-old father of three became an emblem of Trump’s cruelty and lawlessness after being abducted and sent to CECOT, the notorious Salvadoran torture prison where hundreds of people were incarcerated last year at the behest of the White House. After conceding that Abrego had been expelled in “error” — violating a court order barring Abrego’s deportation to his country of origin — the Trump administration nonetheless refused to bring Abrego back to the U.S., smearing him as a terrorist and leaving him to endure months of violence, deprivation, and psychological torture.

Abrego was finally returned last June. But his arrival only marked a surreal new chapter in his ordeal. Rather than bring him back to Maryland, where he lived with his wife and young children, he was jailed in Tennessee, as federal prosecutors devised a dubious new case against him. Before he’d even landed on U.S. soil, Abrego was indicted on sweeping criminal charges for allegedly smuggling gang members across state lines over the course of a decade.

Abrego, who has pleaded not guilty, was supposed to go to trial in January at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. But late last year, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw canceled the trial date, instead scheduling an evidentiary hearing on a pending question before the court: whether Abrego is the target of a “selective and vindictive prosecution” by the Trump administration.