Obama appointee dismisses all trafficking charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia

 by Andrea Widburg

Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr., is a black judge whom Barack Obama appointed to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. It’s not a far stretch to believe that he is a leftist with an exquisite sensibility about all things that could be run through a racial and immigration filter. Conversely, it’s very hard to believe that his order today dismissing all human trafficking charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia is anything other than a political act, rather than a judicial one.

Here are the undisputed facts about Garcia:

Garcia is a native of El Salvador who entered America illegally in 2011.

In 2019, he was detained in a Home Depot parking lot in Maryland, where people often looked for day labor. He was with a group that the police believed had hidden drugs when they saw the police arrive. One member of the group was a known MS-13 gang member. The police gang unit noted that Garcia and the others had tattoos and clothing consistent with MS-13 membership. Additionally, a police informant said that Garcia had MS-13 ties. Garcia denied being a gang member.

Although Garcia was not criminally charged, he was transferred to ICE custody. The immigration judge, however, kept him in America under a narrow withholding of removal order (not asylum status) because Garcia claimed he might be killed by a gang in El Salvador, allegedly because he had refused to join the gang. Let’s just say I can think of other reasons why Garcia might be afraid of a gang.

In 2020 and 2021, Garcia’s wife sought protective orders against him because of his physical abuse. No charges were filed. She later claimed they had reconciled, which may well be true given that he was apparently the family breadwinner.

In 2022, while in Tennessee, troopers stopped Garcia for driving a car carrying multiple non-English speaking, Hispanic passengers. It looked remarkably like human smuggling, but when the troopers spoke with ICE (then under Biden control), they apparently realized they’d get no traction there, and they let him go.  

In 2025, the Trump administration deported Garcia to El Salvador. This was done in error because of the withholding of removal order. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that Garcia had to be returned to America. (Another one of Amy Comey Barrett’s hyper-technical rulings.)

Immediately upon Garcia’s return to the U.S., the DOJ filed federal charges against him for human trafficking. This charge was well within the five-year statute of limitations.

Today, Judge Crenshaw announced that the prosecution was undertaken for the wrong reasons, as payback for the deportation fight, and dismissed all charges. Here’s the key language:

The Court does not reach its conclusion lightly. The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution. The Executive Branch closed its investigation on the November 2022 traffic stop. Only after Abrego succeeded in vindicating his rights did the Executive Branch reopen that investigation. What the Government labels as “new evidence” was not new as a matter of law. The prosecutor’s subjective good faith does not cure the retaliatory taint. Absent Blanche’s tainted investigation, Agent Saoud would not have called McGuire, Singh would not have brought him into the fold, and McGuire would not have sought an indictment against Abrego. The indictment then provided the Executive Branch cover to comply with Judge Xinis’ order to facilitate Abrego’s return to the United States as soon as possible.

 

Abrego’s motion to dismiss the indictment must be granted.

In other words, per Judge Crenshaw, we must keep in America an illegal alien who was suspected of human trafficking because it looks as if the DOJ was pulling a Lavrentiy Beria on him. Beria, as you may recall, was Stalin’s head of the secret police who famously said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” That’s always been understood to mean he fabricated crimes to catch innocent men.

The situation is a bit different here: Kilmar Abrego has no right to be in the country. His claim of fear back home stinks to high heaven, his associations here stick to high heaven, he’s a spousal abuser, and he was caught in highly suspicious circumstances—on camera—transporting a bunch of non-English speaking people who were no relation to him. But Judge Crenshaw thinks it was totally unfair to charge this very bad man.

Here’s what commentators on X had to say:

This is not the rule of law. This is the rule of leftism. I can guarantee you 100% that Crenshaw would have reached a very different result if he had a J6 protestor in front of him—an American citizen—who claimed that the Biden government was persecuting, rather than rightfully prosecuting, him.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/05/black_obama_appointee_dismisses_all_trafficking_charges_against_kilmar_abrego_garcia.html