Washington DC - A federal judge dismissed a criminal case on Friday filed against a Salvadoran man at the center of a row over President Donald Trump's crackdown on migrants.
District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ruled that the case brought against Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the Trump Justice Department was "an abuse of prosecuting power."
Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident married to an American woman, was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March of last year.
The 30-year-old was sent to a notorious maximum-security prison, where he says he was subjected to torture and abuse.
In June, he was returned to the US and immediately arrested on human smuggling charges in Tennessee – to which he has pleaded not guilty.
"Today, a federal judge determined what we've known all along, the Trump admin was engaged in a vindictive prosecution against Kilmar Abrego Garcia," Senator Chris Van Hollen, who met with Abrego Garcia while he was in El Salvador, wrote on X.
"This is a win for all our rights & the Constitution."
Abrego Garcia was one of more than 250 men that the Trump administration sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador last year.
Washington claimed – without providing evidence – that they were terrorists and gang members, but their release was ordered by a judge a few months later.