A judge has released documents naming Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's office as responsible for telling Tennessee U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire that targeting Kilmar Ábrego García was a "top priority."
An order from Dec. 3 was unsealed late Tuesday showing Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. reviewed about 3,000 government documents in his chambers and allowed "a few dozen" to be turned over to Ábrego's defense team.
In 2019, under the first Trump administration, Ábrego was given a work permit in the U.S. and a federal judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador. Under President Donald Trump's new administration, however, Ábrego was taken into custody while driving his 5-year-old son home. Despite a judge's attempts to stop it, Ábrego wad deported to a brutal prison in El Salvador.
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to bring Ábrego back to the U.S. It took more than two months for the administration to comply with the demand. Upon returning him, the Justice Department then charged Ábrego with human smuggling in the middle district of Tennessee stemming from a 2022 traffic stop. It has been an ongoing battle to deport him ever since, emblematic of the battle between the administration and the federal court system.
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg has initiated contempt proceedings because the Trump administration defied his orders.
The newly-released documents not only confirm the orders were intentionally ignored, but it also proved the Justice Department only pressed to prosecute Ábrego after it mistakenly deported him. Ábrego's legal team is now alleging "vindictive prosecution."
McGuire previously swore he alone was behind the indictment of Ábrego, but the new documents show Blanche telling McGuire that an indictment was a “top priority." He said that the DOJ wanted it “sooner rather than later” and they even oversaw its content, noted Lawfare's Roger Parloff.
Legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance said that releasing the documents to Ábrego's lawyers "is bad news for the Trump administration, which is going to have to defend itself against Ábrego Garcia’s claim he’s being vindictively prosecuted. But that claim is supported by some of the government’s own emails."
The vindictiveness case "hinges on timing," Parloff explained in a BlueSky thread. "For 3 years the government took no steps to charge him for his 11/30/22 traffic stop. It sent him to CECOT on 3/15/25 and on 4/1/25, closed his arrest file."
"Only after Ábrego won his Maryland civil case, with the Supreme Court on 4/10/25 ordering the government to facilitate Ábrego's return, did the government reopen Ábrego's criminal case," Parloff added.
Blanche confessed to Fox News in an interview that the reason they went after Ábrego was "a judge in Maryland" accused the government of doing something wrong.
"That sounds vindictive," said Parloff.