Baltimore again served as a backdrop for the contentious immigration battle pitting Kilmar Abrego Garcia against the Trump administration's hardline immigration enforcement efforts. 

Crowds gathered around Abrego Garcia to listen to the undocumented immigrant from El Salvador speak about his lengthy fight to stay in the United States outside downtown Baltimore's Fallon federal building on Friday. 

Defiant and continuing to fight 

Abrego Garcia, who first came to Maryland and settled with his family here in 2011, addressed the crowd before a mandatory immigration check-in. 

At another immigration appointment in August, he was immediately detained and later sent to a facility in Pennsylvania, where he remained in custody until this week. 

Not this time.

"I stand before you as a free man, and I want you to remember me this way with my head held up high," Abrego Garcia said through an interpreter. 

He invoked his faith several times and thanked those who showed up to support his case. 

"I want to tell everybody who is also suffering family separation that God is with you. This is the process," Abrego Garcia said. "Keep fighting."

He vowed to "stand firm" against "injustice" and promised to win in the courts. 

"Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws, and I believe that this injustice will come to its end," he said. "…Keep fighting. Do not give up. I wish all of you love and justice. Keep going."

Maryland judge makes key ruling

A federal judge in Maryland, Paula Xinis, granted the temporary restraining order that allowed Abrego Garcia his freedom. 

She ordered that he not be taken into custody until more briefings took place on his case. 

Her ruling accused the government of misleading her.

It is the latest twist in the saga following Abrego Garcia's arrest near his Beltsville home in March. He had left his job as a sheet metal apprentice in Baltimore earlier that day. 

Abrego was soon deported to El Salvador despite a court order preventing his removal there to protect his safety.

Xinis found the government's response was "without lawful action" as Immigration and Customs Enforcement never obtained a final order of removal, despite threats to send Abrego Garcia to several African countries. 

"This time, when the court sought information about Liberia and Costa Rica so to fairly assess the validity of Abrego Garcia's claims, respondents did not just stonewall. They affirmatively misled the tribunal. They announced that Liberia is the only viable removal option because Costa Rica 'does not wish to receive him, and that Costa Rica will no longer accept the transfer' of him," Xinis wrote. "But Costa Rica had never wavered in its commitment to receive Abrego Garcia, just as Abrego Garcia never wavered in his commitment to resettle there. This evidently remained an inconvenient truth for respondents. But more to the point, respondents' persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the 'basic purpose' of timely third-country removal."

Trump officials have called Xinis an "activist" on the federal bench. 

Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary with the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on social media, "This is naked judicial activism by an Obama-appointed judge. This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts."

Xinis has strong Baltimore ties, as WJZ Investigates reported earlier this year. 

The judge was appointed to the U.S. District Court in Maryland in 2015 by President Barack Obama. 

She was confirmed in 2016.

The Yale Law grad served as a federal public defender before joining the law firm of Murphy, Falcon, and Murphy in 2011. She became a partner in 2013.

The firm's founding partner, well-known Baltimore attorney Billy Murphy, has handled many high-profile cases, including representing the family of Freddie Gray after he died in police custody a decade ago. 

Xinis' official biography said while at Murphy's firm, she "handled complex civil actions as well as mass and class actions in state and federal court."

Maryland lawmakers differ 

Representative Andy Harris, Maryland's lone Republican in Congress, wrote on social media, "Given Kilmar Abrego Garcia's MS-13 ties, record of domestic abuse, and indictment for human smuggling, he has no business roaming free on American…let alone Maryland…streets."

Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, garnered international attention when he visited Abrego while he was in custody in El Salvador. 

On Friday, WJZ investigates asked the senator about Abrego Garcia's release from custody.

"This is about more than one man. It's really about Kilmar Abrego Garcia's rights, and if you deny him his constitutional rights and due process rights, you threaten the rights of everybody," Senator Van Hollen said. "I want to salute the federal judge who focused on the constitution and the rule of law—and that judge said the Trump administration continued to trample over the legal rights of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. That is why she said he needed to go free and get out of detainment. The Trump administration says that it will appeal, but at least for now, the rule of law has prevailed."

Home in Maryland 

After leaving Baltimore, Abrego Garcia headed back to his family's home in Beltsville, Prince George's County.

His legal team vowed the fight is not over.

"I wish I could say that this is the end of the story, but I think we've all been here long enough to know that, unfortunately, the government is not going to leave well enough alone. They're going to keep throwing the weight of the Department of Justice and the weight of the Department of Homeland Security against this man, against his family, just like they've been doing against this country and against this nation for the whole year," Abrego Garcia's attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.