Lawyers for Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia are urging a federal judge in Tennessee to cancel an evidentiary hearing on alleged vindictive prosecution and instead dismiss his criminal human smuggling case, arguing the Department of Justice is “stonewalling” efforts to examine who authorized the charges and why.

In a court filing Thursday, defense attorneys said the DOJ has refused to make ranking department officials available to testify about the government’s decision to pursue immigrant-smuggling charges against Abrego Garcia, 30, whose case has become an anomaly among the Trump administration’s more broadly successful immigration enforcement strategy. Defense attorneys argued that without that testimony, prosecutors cannot adequately rebut that the prosecution was purs

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