8 Jun 2025

Prosecutor Resigns Due to Political Nature of Abrego Garcia Indictment

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Prosecutor Ben Schrader’s resignation from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee came to light and occurred because the grand jury indictment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia appeared to be political.

Schrader was the former Chief of the Criminal Division in that office. He had worked there 15 years. He resigned the day the Abrego Garcia indictment was signed by Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Robert E. McGuire under seal, 21 May 2025. The indictment was unsealed and Schrader’s resignation became public news 6 June.

The indictment alleges Abrego Garcia was a full time smuggler of undocumented immigrants, minors and MS-13 gang members across the USA, supposedly making more than 100 smuggling trips. Other allegations include abusing women and children during the trips, soliciting explicit material from a minor, connection to murder of the mother of a rival gang member, and trafficking guns and narcotics.

Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador. An immigration judge issued an order in 2019 that if he were ever deported, he must not be sent there because he would be targeted for harm by gangs. He was illegally deported to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador in March without due process. After court orders all the way up to the Supreme Court to bring him back to the USA for due process and persistent claims by the government that it could not do so, on Friday he was brought to Nashville International Airport. He attended court in Nashville, handcuffed and shackled, to face the grand jury charges.

Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem says as soon as he is released from prison in the USA, he will be sent back to El Salvador, once again in violation of the immigration judge’s order.

Schrader is reported by ABC News as having resigned the day the indictment was issued due to “concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons,” but has publicly spoken only wish the best for his former colleagues in their work for “justice on behalf of the American people.”

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