US Politics
Judge grants Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release from ICE custody as he fights criminal charges
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A federal judge has granted Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody as the Salvadoran immigrant continues to fight criminal charges brought by Donald Trump’s administration.
Thursday’s ruling from Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis grants his release “immediately.”
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.
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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Garcia’s legal team has said he is prepared to leave the country for Costa Rica, an offer that the Trump administration rescinded after he did not agree to its condition that he plead guilty to human smuggling charges.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.
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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.”
The Independent has requested comment from attorneys for Abrego Garcia.
