Washington — Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to his Maryland home Thursday night after a federal judge ordered his immediate release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, his attorney Simon Sandoval‑Moshenberg said. He was released from an ICE facility in Pennsylvania and later seen arriving in Maryland.
Abrego Garcia’s legal team said he must report to an ICE field office in Baltimore at 8 a.m. Friday. His lawyers expressed concern he could be re‑arrested then on other grounds; after a prior release this summer, similar instructions led to his re‑detention.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis granted Abrego Garcia’s habeas petition, finding there was no final order of removal that would authorize deportation and concluding that detention for the stated purpose of removal to a third country could not lawfully continue. Xinis wrote that, without statutory authority for third‑country removal, a meaningful or imminent removal was not reasonably foreseeable and that the government had not shown it was acting consistently with due process.
Assistant Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin sharply criticized the ruling, calling it “naked judicial activism by an Obama‑appointed judge,” and said the administration would continue to litigate the matter.
The Trump administration had sought to remove Abrego Garcia to third countries including Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana; none initially agreed to accept him. In October, government lawyers told the court that Liberia had agreed to take him and was finalizing arrangements. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys warned that sending him to Liberia without assurances it would not forward him to El Salvador would be tantamount to an unlawful return to his home country.
In filings, the Justice Department argued Abrego Garcia had received substantial process in the United States, noting that a government asylum officer had interviewed him and found he had not shown he would face persecution or torture in Liberia. ICE official John Schultz testified in October that discussions continued with Eswatini and that, once a third country agreed, removal could occur within 72 hours if the court allowed it.
Abrego Garcia has said he would be willing to go to Costa Rica and has designated it as his preferred country of removal; Costa Rica indicated it would consider refugee status or residency for him, but the Justice Department said Costa Rica had not been part of removal discussions.
His lawyers have accused the administration of gamesmanship — repeatedly moving him among possible destination countries so he could raise new fear claims and thereby prolong his detention. The case has become a flashpoint in the administration’s deportation efforts after Abrego Garcia was mistakenly sent to El Salvador earlier this year despite an existing order barring his removal because of potential gang‑related persecution.
Background: Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2011 and has lived in Maryland with his wife and children. He was arrested by immigration authorities in March and deported even though he had obtained a legal status in 2019 that should have prevented removal. U.S. District Judge Xinis later ordered the Department of Homeland Security to facilitate his return to the United States; immigration officials resisted, and he was returned to the U.S. in June only after a federal grand jury in Tennessee indicted him on two human‑smuggling charges stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop.
Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty in Tennessee and was ordered released on bail ahead of a January criminal trial, but immigration authorities continued to detain him afterward. He was released from criminal custody in August and returned to Maryland, then taken into ICE custody days later after being summoned to a Baltimore ICE office. Officials told his lawyers he might be deported to Uganda; Abrego Garcia said he feared persecution and torture there and feared Ugandan authorities could send him on to El Salvador.
He filed a new legal challenge to his detention and the administration’s effort to deport him again. Xinis blocked his removal and he remained detained at a Pennsylvania facility while the court resolved the matter. Central to the challenge is a 2001 Supreme Court precedent that limits indefinite detention of noncitizens when there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys say he has been in near‑continuous confinement since his March deportation and earlier imprisonment in El Salvador, with only a single brief release for a weekend in August.