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A senior Democratic senator lambasted President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday after a judge handed the administration its latest loss in a high-profile immigration case.

On Tuesday, Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. of the Middle District of Tennessee handed down a ruling that found Trump prosecutors were conspiring with people in Washington, D.C. who "may or may not have acted with improper motivation," when bringing charges against Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, CNN's Jim Scuitto reported on "The Arena." Abrego-Garcia is a Salvadoran national who had lived in Maryland for several years with temporary protected status before the Trump administration illegally deported him in March.

Initially, the Trump administration blamed his deportation on an "administrative error" before returning Abrego-Garcia to the U.S. After he arrived, prosecutors then charged him with human trafficking, and at least one top Department of Justice official called the prosecution of Abrego-Garcia a "top priority," according to the ruling.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) bashed the Trump administration's treatment of Abrego-Garcia during an interview on CNN's "The Arena" on Tuesday, calling it a "smoking gun" for the vindictive prosecution charges.

"The Justice Department decided to bring these charges against him because he asserted his due process rights when they illegally shipped him off to CECOT in El Salvador," Van Hollen said. "This looks like another example of the Trump administration sometimes manipulating the facts to bring a vindictive case against Abrego-Garcia."

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had failed the Republican Party by refusing to open the House of Representatives for legislative business during the government shutdown last year.

During an appearance on C-SPAN this week, host Dasha Burns noted that the year ended without passing an extension for health care subsidies, causing insurance costs to skyrocket for many Americans.

"Republicans having the majority should have planned further in advance instead of the last weeks of the year to see how am I going to deal with this," McCarthy replied. "So now they've kind of got a political football. Remember what happened in the House."

"The Democrats did shut the government down. Everybody would agree with that," he continued. "But the Senate kept working. The House kept everybody away. And when you only have a majority for two years to pass a bill, you have to have a hearing, then you have to have a markup, then you've got to pass the bill, then it's got to go the floor? You just lost two months."

"Was it a mistake for Johnson to send the House home?" Burns wondered.

"The House, you have the power as the Speaker and the majority," McCarthy pointed out. "If you give that power away, you may look at the end of the day, oh, I gave two months, maybe the Democrats won the shutdown."

"How many other bills could we have passed? How many things could we brought to the floor that was an 80-20 issue that actually put the Democrats in a bad place for shutting the government down?"