After a sequence of court setbacks for immigration enforcement, a Tennessee judge on Friday dismissed human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has spent more than a year challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to remove him from the United States.
The dismissal came in a case that the Associated Press described as part of Abrego Garcia’s broader fight after he was deported to El Salvador in March 2025 despite an earlier ruling that should have prevented it. As outlined in an AP timeline that MSI previously covered, the legal proceedings have unfolded across both immigration court and federal criminal court, with multiple rulings limiting the government’s next steps. MSI previously reported that timeline of key events.
According to that timeline, Abrego Garcia was detained by ICE in Baltimore on March 12, 2025, while he was driving home with his 5-year-old son. Three days later, on March 15, 2025, he was deported to El Salvador and held in a prison described as notoriously brutal.
The case then moved back to the U.S. court system. On April 10, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court said the Trump administration must work to bring Abrego Garcia back, setting the stage for the subsequent criminal case in Tennessee.
The Associated Press timeline says Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. and charged with human smuggling on June 6, 2025. The charges, the timeline states, were based on a Tennessee traffic stop from 2022.
In parallel with his criminal case, Abrego Garcia’s immigration fight continued through attempts to remove him to other countries. The AP timeline says ICE announced plans to remove him to a series of African countries beginning July 23, 2025, but that those efforts were blocked by an injunction from a Maryland federal judge.
The AP timeline also places Abrego Garcia’s movement between custody and release in 2025. It says he was released from a Tennessee jail on Aug. 22, 2025 to return to his family in Maryland and await trial. Within minutes of his release, ICE sent notice that it intended to deport him to Uganda, and on Aug. 25, 2025 he reported to an immigration office in Baltimore and was taken into custody.
On the immigration side, the timeline says a federal judge in Maryland ordered ICE to immediately release Abrego Garcia on Dec. 11, 2025, and later ruled on Feb. 17, 2026 that ICE could not re-detain him. Those decisions left the government facing limits on detention while Abrego Garcia’s criminal case proceeded.
The AP timeline describes Friday’s dismissal in Tennessee as the latest turning point. It says the Tennessee judge dismissed the human smuggling case against Abrego Garcia on May 22, 2026 after finding evidence the government engaged in “vindictive prosecution” by the Justice Department.
Taken together, the sequence in the AP timeline shows Abrego Garcia’s case spanning years of court review—from a Maryland immigration judge’s Oct. 10, 2019 ruling that he could not be deported to El Salvador due to threats to his family, through Supreme Court action in April 2025 and then back into criminal litigation. The dismissal adds to the series of judicial decisions that have repeatedly constrained the government’s efforts to remove him, the timeline said, even as ICE announced additional removal plans.