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, told CBS News Abrego Garcia was out of ICE custody in Pennsylvania and was later seen arriving in Maryland.
Abrego Garcia has been instructed to check in at an ICE field office in Baltimore at 8 a.m. Friday, his legal team said. His lawyers worry he could be re‑arrested then on different legal grounds; when he received similar instructions over the summer following his release from pretrial detention, he was taken back into ICE custody.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis granted Abrego Garcia’s habeas corpus petition Thursday, finding there was no final order of removal authorizing the government to deport him and concluding that his detention for the stated purpose of third‑country removal could not continue. “Because respondents have no statutory authority to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country absent a removal order, his removal cannot be considered reasonably foreseeable, imminent, or consistent with due process,” Xinis wrote. “Although respondents may eventually get it right, they have not as of today. Thus, Abrego Garcia’s detention for the stated purpose of third country removal cannot continue. Respondents’ conduct over the past months belie that his detention has been for the basic purpose of effectuating removal, lending further support that Abrego Garcia should be held no longer.”
Assistant Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin criticized the decision as “naked judicial activism by an Obama‑appointed judge,” saying the administration would continue to litigate the matter.
The Trump administration had been seeking to remove Abrego Garcia to third countries including Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana; none agreed to accept him. In October the government told the court that Liberia had agreed to accept him and was making “final necessary arrangements” for deportation. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers warned that sending him to Liberia without assurances it would not forward him to El Salvador would be no less unlawful than deporting him directly to his home country.
In filings, the Justice Department argued Abrego Garcia had received significant process in the U.S., noting a government asylum officer had interviewed him and determined he had not shown he would face persecution or torture in Liberia. ICE official John Schultz testified in October that the administration continued to discuss removal options with Eswatini and that, once a third country agreed, deportation could occur within 72 hours if allowed by the court.
Abrego Garcia has said he is willing to go to Costa Rica and designated it as his preferred country of removal; Costa Rica indicated it would provide refugee status or residency, but the Justice Department said it had not been part of discussions about deporting him there.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia have accused the administration of gamesmanship—trying to move him among countries where he could raise fear claims in order to prolong his detention. The case has been a flashpoint in the administration’s mass‑deportation efforts after Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador earlier this year despite an earlier order barring his removal because of possible gang‑related persecution.
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, despite having been granted a legal status in 2019 that should have prevented removal. U.S. District Judge Xinis later ordered DHS to facilitate his return to the United States, but immigration officials resisted. 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 and a Tennessee judge ordered his release on bail ahead of a criminal trial set for January, but immigration concerns kept him confined longer. He was released from criminal custody in August and returned to Maryland, then was taken into ICE custody days later after being summoned to an ICE office in Baltimore. The administration informed his lawyers he might be deported to Uganda; Abrego Garcia said he feared persecution and torture there and feared Ugandan authorities might send him back to El Salvador.
He filed a new legal challenge to his detention and to the administration’s effort to deport him again. Xinis blocked his removal and he remained detained at a Pennsylvania facility pending the court’s decisions. Central to his challenge is the Supreme Court’s 2001 precedent that bars 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 imprisonment in El Salvador, with his only brief freedom a single weekend in August.