Kilmar Abrego Garcia cannot be re-detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, dealing the Trump administration another blow in its effort to keep him locked up while it attempts to deport him again.
The injunction issued by US District Judge Paula Xinis, of the federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, follows an emergency order she handed down in December that similarly blocked officials from taking Abrego Garcia into immigration custody. But unlike the earlier ruling, the government can appeal the new one up to a Richmond-based federal appeals court.
Tuesday’s decision is the latest judicial rebuke of the government’s maneuvering in Abrego Garcia’s case, which has come to symbolize the administration’s hardline — and, at times, slapdash — approach to immigration enforcement. Abrego Garcia was unlawfully deported to El Salvador last year and, following a series of court rulings, brought back to the US to face federal human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
After the judge overseeing his criminal case agreed to let him remain free ahead of trial, immigration officials took Abrego Garcia into custody and scrambled to find a country where they could deport him. Their bid to send him to several different African nations has so far ended in failure. Because of that, Xinis concluded, there was no lawful basis to keep him in immigration custody in the meantime.
“The court easily concludes that there is no ‘good reason to believe’ removal is likely in the reasonably foreseeable future,” she wrote in the 10-page decision. Federal officials, Xinis continued, “have done nothing to show that Abrego Garcia’s continued detention in ICE custody is consistent with due process.”
Since he was first released from immigration custody in December, Abrego Garcia has been living in Maryland under the strict pre-trial release conditions imposed on him by the judge in Tennessee. Those conditions include being under the custody of his brother and not being able to travel outside of Maryland without permission from the Tennessee court.
He also cannot leave his residence except to go to work, attend religious services, see a medical professional or attend court proceedings.
The legal saga surrounding Abrego Garcia first kicked off last March, when he was deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador in violation of a prior court order that expressly prohibited officials from sending him back to his home country because he feared gang violence there.
A web of court rulings that followed repeatedly found in his favor, infuriating Trump administration officials, who, for months, resisted bringing him back to the US. He was finally returned in early June.
Meanwhile, the legitimacy of his criminal case in Tennessee faces a major test next week as the federal judge overseeing his trial hears arguments over Abrego Garcia’s claim that he’s being unfairly targeted. The judge has already indicated through several rulings that he’s sympathetic to those arguments.
