NASHVILLE — A top federal prosecutor in Tennessee testified Thursday that he alone made the decision to prosecute Kilmar Abrego García on human smuggling charges and that he faced no pressure from top Trump administration officials to do so.
Robert C. McGuire, the former acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said he sought an indictment against the 31-year-old undocumented immigrant and Maryland resident last May because he was convinced of his guilt — not because of any political motive.
“I kept coming back to the proof,” McGuire told U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. “I felt very confident that the defendant had committed a crime, and I could prove it. It was just that simple. It didn’t involve anything else for me than that.”
McGuire offered that explanation as the case, one of the highest-profile Justice Department prosecutions of Trump’s second term, faced a critical test that will determine whether the judge will allow the government to move forward.
Abrego’s lawyers have urged Crenshaw to throw out the charges, saying they amount to little more than a retaliatory effort to punish Abrego for successfully challenging the Trump administration in court over his illegal deportation to El Salvador last year.
“If there has ever been a case for dismissal on those grounds,” Sean Hecker, an attorney for Abrego, wrote in recent court filings, “this is that case.”
By the time McGuire launched his investigation, Abrego’s removal had already drawn international attention and multiple courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court — had ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.
McGuire’s office eventually charged Abrego in connection with a 2022 traffic stop, in which they say he was caught driving nine undocumented immigrants through the state as part of a human smuggling conspiracy. Investigators had declined to charge Abrego at the time, and he has denied any wrongdoing.
Crenshaw, in a ruling last year, determined that the timing of the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute Abrego and public statements from top officials established a “realistic likelihood” the criminal case was driven by improper vindictive motives.
Under the law, that finding shifts the burden to the government to prove there were legitimate reasons for bringing the case. Crenshaw has signaled he’s prepared to consider dismissing the case if prosecutors fail to convince him their motives were just.
The judge made no immediate ruling at the conclusion of Thursday’s five-hour hearing, and left open the possibility that he could seek to hear more testimony about the decision to prosecute Abrego before he issues a decision.
Still, underscoring the significance officials have placed on the case and the precarious point at which it now stands, the Justice Department sent its No. 3 official, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr., to defend the government’s actions in court.
“Who made the decision to seek an indictment of Mr. Abrego?” Woodward repeatedly asked McGuire on Thursday.
McGuire’s response never wavered: “I did.”
The former U.S. attorney said he did not learn that Abrego had been stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol in 2022 until the controversy over his deportation erupted last year.
He insisted that if he felt that there was no basis for criminal charges he would have had no problem saying so to top Justice Department officials who had taken an interest in the case.
“I’d rather get fired as an honest man than having to do somebody else’s bidding,” McGuire said.
Rana Saoud, who was serving as head of the Homeland Security Investigations office in Nashville at the time of Abrego’s deportation, testified that she first heard of the traffic stop in April, when someone forwarded her an article from a conservative news outlet outlining the incident.
At the time, the Department of Homeland Security had been pushing details of the stop in news releases in an effort to paint Abrego as a criminal.
She said she contacted McGuire suggesting they open their own investigation. “If the facts did not add up, we would have ceased to move forward,” she said. “The case just kept getting stronger.”
Still, McGuire acknowledged Thursday that some in his office disagreed with the decision to prosecute. One of his top deputies — Ben Schrader, a veteran prosecutor of 15 years and the head of the office’s criminal division — resigned in protest over the decision the day the indictment was returned.
Schrader, McGuire said, had raised concerns that the effort to charge Abrego in connection with a three-year-old traffic stop could appear as if the Justice Department was seeking revenge.
The Trump administration only complied with court orders to return Abrego to the United States after McGuire had secured the two-count indictment against him. Administration officials have continued to malign Abrego publicly and threatened him with deportation to Africa — despite his stated willingness to voluntarily leave, if allowed, to Costa Rica.
In a Fox News interview last year, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department launched its investigation after those initial rulings that found the Trump administration had “no right to deport him.”
“What should we do as the Department of Justice when a judge is accusing us of doing something wrong?” Blanche said. “We have an obligation … to investigate it, and that’s exactly what we did.”
Crenshaw, in an earlier ruing, singled out Blanche’s statements, saying on their own they came close to establishing proof of a vindictive motive. But the judge said more evidence was needed to prove Blanche or officials under him had been directly involved in the decision-making to seek an indictment against Abrego.
On Thursday, Abrego’s lawyers pointed to frequent communications between McGuire and deputies in Blanche’s office in the weeks before charges were filed. They maintained that no matter McGuire’s personal motives, other Justice Department officials were already exploring the idea of bringing a retaliatory case.
Messages presented in court Thursday showed that even before McGuire had informed his superiors in Washington that he was opening his own investigation, a deputy in Blanche’s office had already taken steps to facilitate a potential prosecution.
Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, who oversees matters involving U.S. attorney’s offices around the country, emailed McGuire the same day the Tennessee prosecutor said he learned of the 2022 traffic stop to set up a conversation about a potential cooperator who might have information relevant to Abrego’s alleged crimes.
Singh, in an email, described the matter as a “top priority” for the department.
McGuire defended those messages in court Thursday as typical oversight that would occur between the Justice Department and a U.S. attorney handling any high-profile case.
“I wasn’t asking Mr. Singh for his permission or getting him to buy into it,” McGuire said. “We were saying this is happening, let’s make sure everyone’s okay with it happening.”
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