Judge orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia to remain free until at least next week
Kilmar Abrego Garcia — who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March — will remain free on supervised release until at least the end of the year, after a Maryland judge on Monday extended her order barring the government from detaining and deporting him again.
Abrego Garcia was released from federal immigration custody earlier this month. At a hearing on Monday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis extended a temporary restraining order from earlier this month that prohibits the Trump administration from again taking Abrego Garcia into custody as she considers how to rule next in the case.
Xinis ordered the Justice Department to inform her by Dec. 26 on what the Trump administration's definitive plans are for how it intends to move forward with moving to deport Abrego Garcia. The Salvadoran national's attorneys will have until Dec. 30 to respond to the government's position. At least until then, Abrego Garcia will remain with his family in Maryland.
In Monday's hearing, Xinis pushed Justice Department attorney Ernesto Molina on what specific steps the administration plans to take on Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration has indicated it plans to deport. Until she gets specifics, she suggested she is not going to allow the Trump administration to detain him.
"Why should I give the respondents the benefit of the doubt?" she asked, referring to the Trump administration.
Molina said he needed to talk to representatives at the Department of Homeland Security before giving her an answer.
"I need something to say, 'okay, they're not just going to pick Mr. Abrego Garcia up without lawful authority,'" Xinis said to Molina. "That's a real question. He was deported without lawful authority, he was detained without lawful authority."
Abrego Garcia has been in legal limbo for months. The Maryland resident, who first came to the U.S. unlawfully in 2011, was deported to El Salvador and held in a supermax prison, despite a 2019 immigration court order barring him from being sent to his home country and an order from Xinis to fly him back. The Trump administration described his deportation as an "administrative error." He was ultimately brought back to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges.
He was then held in pre-trial detention in Tennessee, released after two months, and then re-arrested days later and held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention while the government seeks to deport him a second time. He was released from federal custody earlier this month, after Xinis found that he had been detained unlawfully.
Abrego Garcia appeared in-person in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the first time since he was released from ICE custody.
Abrego Garcia's attorneys said they are deciding how to handle his ongoing immigration case, as he simultaneously faces a looming criminal prosecution on charges of alleged human smuggling in Tennessee in January. Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty and has moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that the prosecution is selective and vindictive.
"If the government were to say today, we're going to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica," one of Abrego Garcia's attorneys Jonathan Cooper said, his client is prepared to go "as soon as this afternoon."
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, another of Abrego Garcia's attorneys, said that his client is "literally in a double bind in which he has two ankle bracelets on him," barring him from self-deporting.
