Judge says Justice Department failed to make case for Abrego Garcia’s detention ahead of criminal trial
A judge in Tennessee said the Justice Department hasn’t made a convincing case that
Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be kept in pretrial detention, though the mistakenly deported man who was returned to the US is likely to remain in federal immigration custody regardless.
Abrego Garcia is being held in Tennessee as he faces a
federal indictment of smuggling undocumented immigrants across state lines in 2022. The US
returned him from El Salvador this month after the indictment was unsealed, ending a political standoff over his due process rights.
His court proceedings have become a vessel for the Trump Justice Department’s hardball approach to immigration enforcement in which it has sought to portray Abrego Garcia as part of a gang operation in Maryland.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/20/politics/kilmar-abrego-garcia-case-breakdown
But as she ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor, Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes of the federal court in Nashville said Sunday that “the government failed to prove” so far that he endangered any minor victim, might try to flee from the law or might attempt to obstruct justice, as the Justice Department had argued. She noted that under federal criminal law, the Justice Department hadn’t even shown it had enough evidence to hold a hearing seeking his pretrial detention.
Still, Abrego Garcia is likely to remain in federal custody, because immigration authorities will be able to keep him detained separate from his criminal case. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Holmes’ opinion is still a notable one, building upon six hours of evidence and testimony regarding Abrego Garcia’s detention earlier this month, in what amounted to a preview of what may be evidence used at a trial.
Holmes’
51-page ruling essentially deems some DOJ accusations about Abrego Garcia to be overblown — built upon evidence with questionable reliability from a traffic stop, cooperators in the case providing information to law enforcement through hearsay, and a shaky theory of victimizing children in a human-smuggling operation when that has not been charged or proved by the DOJ, the judge wrote.