Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody following an order from a federal judge.
Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis granted his “immediate” release Thursday as the Salvadoran immigrant continues to fight criminal charges brought by Donald Trump’s administration. He was released from a detention center in Pennsylvania on Thursday evening.
Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to a brutal prison in his home country in March, igniting a high-profile legal battle for his return at the center of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda.
Government lawyers admitted he was removed due to a procedural error, and several federal judges and a unanimous Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return after his “illegal” arrest.
But the government spent weeks battling court orders for his return while administration officials launched a barrage of public attacks, declaring that he would never again step foot in the country.
He was abruptly returned to the United States in June only to face allegations that he illegally moved other immigrants across the country. He has pleaded not guilty.
Abrego Garcia was released from pretrial detention in that case, but ICE immediately arrested him, again, and relaunched a legal fight to deport him before he could face trial for the charges against him.
Since then, the Trump administration has tried to deport him to at least six different countries, including African nations Eswatini, Ghana, Liberia and Uganda.
Abrego Garcia’s legal team has said he is prepared to leave the country for Costa Rica, an offer that the Trump administration rescinded after he did not agree to its condition that he plead guilty to human smuggling charges.
The offer from Costa Rica to grant Abrego Garcia “residence and refugee status is, and always has been, firm, unwavering, and unconditional,” Xinis wrote Thursday.
In her order, the judge reprimanded administration officials for repeatedly defying court orders and suggested that the government’s “conduct” in his case “belie” arguments that his ongoing ICE detention “has been for the basic purpose of effectuating removal.”
The government’s “steadfast refusal to remove him to Costa Rica amid constant threats of removal to a series of African countries that expressed no or limited desire to take him can only be construed as punitive and contrary to the purposes of ICE detention,” she wrote.
Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the order “naked judicial activism.”
“This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” she told The Independent.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, partner at Murray Osorio PLLC and lead counsel on the case, called the ruling a “powerful affirmation that the rule of law still matters.”
“The court made unmistakably clear that the government cannot detain a person indefinitely without legal authority, and that every agency involved must now comply fully and promptly with the court’s directives,” he said in a statement to The Independent.
“We remain hopeful that this marks a turning point for Mr. Abrego Garcia, who has endured more than anyone should ever have to,” he said. “At the same time, we are mindful of the government’s past conduct in this case and will stay vigilant to ensure that nothing undermines the court’s decision.”
Inside El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, Abrego Garcia and dozens of other deportees experienced weeks of “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture,” attorneys allege.
Upon returning to the United States in June, Abrego Garcia briefly reunited with his wife and U.S. citizen children in Maryland, where he has been living and working as a sheet metal worker since entering the country without legal permission as a teenager in 2012.
An immigration judge in 2019 determined he could not be deported to El Salvador over credible fears of gang violence from a group that targeted his family.
Xinis has granted Abrego Garcia a similar “withholding of removal” order that prevents ICE from immediately deporting him.
Separately, Abrego Garcia is pressing a different federal judge overseeing his criminal case to drop the charges against him, citing vindictive and selective prosecution. His attorneys argue he has been “singled out by the United States government.”
“Rather than fix its mistake and return [him] to the United States, the government fought back at every level of the federal court system,” attorneys wrote in court filings. “And at every level, [he] won. This case results from the government’s concerted effort to punish him for having the audacity to fight back, rather than accept a brutal injustice.”
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