On Thursday, a US judge ordered the immediate release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Pennsylvania. According to the ruling issued by federal district judge Paula Xinis in Maryland, Garcia is allowed to temporarily return to his home in Maryland but must continue to comply with the release conditions imposed in his criminal case, including home confinement and electronic monitoring.
Judge Xinis determined that an official order for Garcia’s deportation was not issued by an immigration judge in 2019, citing the risk of gang persecution as grounds for prohibiting his deportation to El Salvador.
In her ruling, Judge Xinis stated that the government had “no lawful basis to detain and deport” Garcia and therefore “must cease continued detention of him.”
Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the immigration judge’s 2019 decision implied that Garcia met the conditions for deportation and should be considered a formal deportation order.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, called Thursday’s ruling by the judge “blatant judicial radicalism,” stating that “the order has no valid legal basis, and we will continue to vigorously defend this in court.”
Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador, entered the United States in 2011 at the age of 16 and later submitted an asylum application to US immigration authorities. In 2019, his application was denied by an immigration court, which deemed him eligible for return to El Salvador but allowed the government to temporarily defer the deportation.
In mid-March this year, Garcia was mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador by the Department of Homeland Security as a member of the Venezuelan gang “Tren de Aragua.” Government lawyers later acknowledged this as an “administrative error.”
He returned to the United States in June but still faces two cases: one in immigration court where US authorities seek to deport him to a third country, and another in criminal court related to a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop case where he was found transporting multiple illegal immigrants across state lines.
The Trump administration has been striving to deport Garcia and considered several African countries as potential destinations for deportation before Liberia agreed to temporarily receive him for humanitarian reasons.
Garcia’s lawyer stated that he would agree to be deported to Costa Rica, a Spanish-speaking Central American country that had previously agreed to grant him refugee status.
The Trump administration did not specify why they did not agree to deport Garcia to Costa Rica, only stating that negotiations need to continue.
(This article draws reference from a report by Reuters)