Donald Trump’s administration plans to arrest and deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia — again — at some point after he is released from federal custody on criminal charges stemming from allegations of human smuggling.
Lawyers for the government told a federal judge on Thursday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will arrest and deport the 29-year-old Salvadoran immigrant a second time, but not to El Salvador.
“Our plan is, he will be taken into ICE custody and removal proceedings will be initiated,” Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Guynn said during a court hearing over his initial challenge to his removal from the country. There are no “imminent” plans to do so, he said.
Hours later, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice told the Associated Press that the government will first try Abrego Garcia on the charges against him before deporting him from the country.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers had filed an emergency request for an order that would bring him to his home in Maryland — where he can be reunited with his wife and child, both U.S. citizens, along with two children from a previous relationship — when he is released from federal custody in Tennessee.
That arrangement would prevent his deportation before he stands trial.
Abrego Garcia is at the center of a high-profile wrongful deportation case after he was wrongfully deported to a brutal prison in his home country despite an immigration court order preventing the government from removing him from the United States for humanitarian reasons.
Administration officials fought off court orders for weeks despite admitting he was removed from the country due to an “administrative error,” claiming that they were powerless to return him. They then abruptly brought him back to face a criminal indictment in Tennessee.
On Wednesday, his attorneys expressed concern that his release would lead to immediate detention by ICE and deportation.
Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville on Wednesday rejected federal prosecutors’ request to imprison the wrongfully deported Salvadoran father while he is awaiting trial on criminal charges.
He can be released on his own recognizance but must attend anger management counseling, home detention, location monitoring and drug testing, the judge said.
On Thursday, the Justice Department said there were no “imminent” plans to begin his removal from the country.
“There’s no timeline,” Guynn told Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis. “We do plan to comply with the orders we received from this court and other courts but there’s no timeline for these specific proceedings.”
The judge scheduled a July 7 court hearing in Maryland to discuss the emergency request and other matters.
Federal judges and a unanimous Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return after government lawyers admitted he was removed from the country due to a procedural error.
But the government spent weeks battling court orders while officials publicly said he would never step foot in the United States.
After spending three months in two different El Salvador jails, Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States earlier this month following a federal grand jury indictment accusing him of illegally transporting immigrants across the country.
He has pleaded not guilty.
Last week, Judge Holmes denied the Justice Department’s motion to keep Abrego Garcia in pretrial detention, noting the “multiple layers of hearsay” in government arguments that “defied common sense.”
Holmes conceded, however, that Abrego Garcia was likely to end up back in federal custody while his criminal case moves through the courts.
Federal prosecutors and Attorney General Pam Bondi have sought to portray Abrego Garcia as a public menace and threat to society in a motion to keep him imprisoned as his case moves to trial. He’s accused of a range of crimes, for which he has not been charged, including “solicitation of child pornography.”
Judge Holmes cast doubt on prosecutors’ arguments, noting that they have been filtered through “at least three, if not four or more, levels of hearsay” and carried “no weight” legally.
“That the level of hearsay cannot even be determined renders the evidence patently unreliable,” she wrote.
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