BREAKING: Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be immediately released, a federal judge rules
The U.S. government never obtained a final order for his removal.
All Rise News subscribers knew last month that this ruling was imminent.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia has spent nearly four months in immigration detention “without lawful authority” and must be immediately released, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
“Since Abrego Garcia’s return from wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been re-detained, again without lawful authority,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis wrote in a 31-page memorandum opinion. “For this reason, the Court will GRANT Abrego Garcia’s Petition for immediate release from ICE custody.”
As previously reported on All Rise News, Judge Xinis doubted that the government obtained a final order of removal of Abrego at a hearing in November. That failure forms the central basis of Thursday’s ruling.
Abrego’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The history of Abrego Garcia’s case is as well known as it is extraordinary,” Xinis notes in her ruling.
This past March, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security hustled Abrego out of the country to a terrorism prison in El Salvador, where a court order blocked his removal. After five court orders demanding his return, the government returned him to the United States for prosecution on allegations that he smuggled immigrants in 2022.
Abrego has pleaded not guilty to those charges and won his release from pre-trial criminal detention following multiple hearings. He is scheduled to stand trial in January.
Days after Abrego’s release from criminal custody, he surrendered to an ICE field office in Baltimore for immigration detention on Aug. 26. The government subsequently tried to deport him to four separate African countries: Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia. The first three African nations refused to take him, and the fourth did not commit to avoid Abrego’s further deportation to El Salvador, where he fears persecution.
But Xinis identified a more fundamental problem: the absence of an order of removal.
“Because Abrego Garcia has been held in ICE detention to effectuate third-country removal absent a lawful removal order, his requested relief is proper,” the ruling states. “Separately, 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.”
Abrego’s attorneys have long agreed to accept their client’s self-deportation to Costa Rica, which agreed to respect his human rights and not to remove him to El Salvador.
The Trump administration initially offered his safe passage to Costa Rica in exchange for a guilty plea and then withdrew the offer when Abrego rejected the plea offer. Months later, the U.S. government claimed that Costa Rica withdrew its offer, which reporting in the Washington Post exposed as a lie.
Judge Xinis said the Trump administration “affirmatively misled the tribunal.”
“They announced that Liberia is the only viable removal option because Costa Rica ‘does not wish to receive him,’ … and that Costa Rica will no longer ‘accept the transfer’ of him… But Costa Rica had never wavered in its commitment to receive Abrego Garcia, just as Abrego Garcia never wavered in his commitment to resettle there.”
In a subsequent order, Xinis demanded that the government notify her about the status of Abrego’s release by 5 p.m. Eastern Time. Once released, Abrego will await trial under home confinement.
Read the ruling in full here.
This is a developing story.
I wish the federal government would leave this man alone and let him go home to his family. My opinion (which doesn’t matter) is, he’s been put through more than any human should have to endure. Send him home and let him be!
Yay! Thanks Adam.