Who Decided to Indict Kilmar Abrego Garcia Over a Years-Old Traffic Stop?

© THE INTERCEPT

A DOJ prosecutor insists he charged Abrego based strictly on evidence of human smuggling. A federal judge seems skeptical.

More than a year after Kilmar Abrego Garcia won at the U.S. Supreme Court — forcing the Trump administration to bring him back from El Salvador — federal officials can’t seem to decide what, exactly, they want to do with him.

On the one hand, Trump officials continue to insist that Abrego must be deported to Africa, recently settling on Liberia. At the same time, the Department of Justice has pressed forward with its prosecution of Abrego for human smuggling — a criminal case that must be resolved before the government deports him.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis, who first ordered Abrego’s return to the U.S. and who is still presiding over his immigration case, recently told the DOJ. “He physically needs to be in this country to be prosecuted.”