The Justice Department is pressing forward with its effort to reinstate criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man at the center of a high-profile deportation fight, and a new court filing lays out evidence that prosecutors say ties him to a human smuggling operation.
In an appeal filed Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the DOJ asked judges to reverse a district court ruling that dismissed the indictment against Abrego Garcia in May. That dismissal came after a federal judge found the prosecution was “vindictive,” but the DOJ’s brief now offers new details aimed at rebutting that conclusion and bolstering the smuggling charges.
The case stems from a November 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. According to the DOJ’s filing, Abrego Garcia was driving a car owned by Jose Hernandez Reyes, a convicted human smuggler. The brief says Abrego Garcia called Reyes during the stop and told the trooper he was calling “his boss,” adding that the vehicle was registered to Reyes.
Reyes later told investigators that Abrego Garcia worked as a driver in his smuggling operation and had saved his contact in his phone as “chauffeur.” The DOJ also noted that Abrego Garcia claimed he was driving from St. Louis to Baltimore, but license plate data showed he had come from Texas. The nine passengers in the vehicle, prosecutors say, had no luggage despite being on a long-distance trip.
The brief also references an unidentified witness who was considered credible and who detailed “her texting relationship with Abrego and his numerous invitations for her to join him on his ‘trips’ even though she was a minor.”
In a statement accompanying the filing, the DOJ said the charges were brought “by career prosecutors based on the evidence, the law, and their firm belief that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Abrego Garcia had committed the offenses charged.”
The new evidence is the latest twist in a saga that has drawn intense media attention since Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March 2025. Courts later ordered the administration to return him to the U.S., and upon his return he was indicted on human smuggling charges. The indictment was dismissed in May, with the judge citing “presumptive vindictiveness” by prosecutors.
But the DOJ argues that dismissal was wrong and that the new evidence undermines the claim that the prosecution was retaliatory. The appeal seeks to reinstate the case against Abrego Garcia.
Media coverage criticized
The Federalist, which first reported the details of the new filing, criticized major outlets for omitting the DOJ’s evidence in their coverage of the appeal.
The Guardian, according to the report, focused on the previous dismissal and quoted Abrego Garcia’s lawyers and an immigration advocacy group, but did not detail the new allegations. Forbes and CBS News similarly failed to mention the smuggling evidence, instead highlighting the earlier ruling that accused the administration of vindictiveness.
The New York Times, in May, described the dismissal as an “embarrassing blow to the Trump administration,” and NPR reported that Abrego Garcia was “wrongly deported” and had been “cleared of all criminal charges.”
The DOJ’s new filing is likely to intensify the debate over Abrego Garcia’s case, which has become a flashpoint in the broader fight over immigration enforcement. While his supporters continue to portray him as an innocent father caught up in a politically motivated deportation, the new evidence presents a more complicated picture.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/08/18/new-filing-details-human-smuggling-evidence-against-maryland-father-kilmar-abrego-garcia/