Rising This Week: Abrego, revisited
The Trump admin tries — for the third time — to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia. Plus, a National Day of Action revs up in Alabama.
This coming weekend, a major protest is taking shape at the Civil Rights Movement’s most important sites in Alabama in protest of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
Check below this week’s court listings for more information.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia has grown quite familiar with this standoff.
On Tuesday, Abrego’s attorneys will return to a federal court in Greenbelt, Md., hoping to persuade a judge to block the federal government from sending their client to a faraway African country.
As the iconic Bill Murray line from the 1993 movie goes, it’s Groundhog Day again.
‘Never wavered’
Ever since his return from a foreign prison in El Salvador last year, Abrego has been fighting to remain with his family in Maryland. First, Abrego won his release from pretrial detention multiple times pending a trial for allegedly smuggling immigrants. Then, immigration authorities tried several failed schemes to deport Abrego to at least four African countries to which he has no connection, including Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia. The first three countries refused to participate in the plan.
Eventually, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis blocked the Trump administration’s third-country deportation scheme as illegal, finding that the deportation order against Abrego was invalid. In all of these rulings, Xinis pointedly noted that Abrego offered to self-deport to Costa Rica, which provided written guarantees for safety and human rights. Abrego said he fears persecution back in his native El Salvador, and Costa Rica committed not to send him back to his home country.
This has led to a stalemate.
On Dec. 11, 2025, Xinis first ordered Abrego’s release from immigration detention, and she refused to reconsider that ruling some two months later, permanently barring Abrego’s rearrest and detention.
“Costa Rica had never wavered in its commitment to receive Abrego Garcia, just as Abrego Garcia never wavered in his commitment to resettle there,” Xinis noted in the earlier ruling.
The Trump administration hasn’t wavered either in ignoring Abrego’s preference and attempting to send him to Liberia, where a federal judge has twice found that the government has no legal authority to deport him. The Trump Justice Department appealed the lower court ruling and has been trying to persuade Xinis to reconsider her earlier decisions.
On Tuesday morning, Xinis will revisit the Trump Justice Department’s request — or decide whether she even has the jurisdiction to consider it in light of the government’s pending appeal. The habeas corpus case is separate from Abrego’s pending criminal case, where a separate judge is considering the defense’s motion to dismiss on the grounds of vindictive prosecution.
For Abrego’s legal team, the Trump administration’s relentless attempts to avert a trial by sending him to a faraway African nation to which he has no connection demonstrates that the goal has never been to prosecute him — but to make an example of him.
Since hearings like these are often incremental or repetitive, they frequently receive little public attention, but this third attempt to deport Abrego illustrates a pattern and raises important questions.
If the government wishes to prosecute what it considers to be serious charges, why pursue a deportation scheme that will end-run that criminal case? If the government sincerely wants to deport Abrego, why not choose a path of far less legal resistance by permitting his deportation to Costa Rica and save taxpayer money by avoiding the need for all of these court proceedings?
In court hearings so far, Judge Xinis frequently grilled the Justice Department on these issues, and All Rise News will report on this hearing live from federal court in Greenbelt, Md. with an eye on how the government responds.
In the courts this week
This week in legal news was going to begin quite differently.
On Monday, former FBI director James Comey was originally scheduled to have an initial appearance in his second indictment accusing him of threatening Donald Trump’s life by posting a photograph of seashells on the beach displaying the numbers “86 47.”
Trump’s Justice Department absurdly claims that was a death threat, even though Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn’t recognize any of the definitions of “86” to mean “to kill” and First Amendment experts overwhelmingly agree the message comes nowhere close to meeting a “true threat” standard that would make the message criminal.
Since Comey already registered an appearance in Virginia, his next court appearance in North Carolina has been moved to May 29, and his trial is already on the books for July 15. It remains to be seen whether that date will hold, as Comey is almost certain to challenge the indictment in dismissal and vindictive prosecution motions before that time. Check out the full calendar here.
Former New York City comptroller Brad Lander was also slated to begin trial on Monday in connection with his protest inside an immigration court located at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan last September. Lander’s court appearance has been removed from the calendar, as his trial appears to have been postponed.
Charged only with an alleged violation, Lander doesn’t face any risk of incarceration, but his prosecution has captured widespread attention amid the nationwide clampdown on immigration protesters.
Lander, who is now running for Congress, had been calling attention to the arrests of immigrants who had been dutifully reporting for their scheduled hearings and the documented abuses inside the detention center, which a federal judge said likely violated the U.S. Constitution.
Some other high-profile court proceedings remain on the docket this week.
Cole Allen, charged with attempting to assassinate Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, has a preliminary hearing on Monday, and the D.C. Circuit hears an appeal of lower court rulings blocking Trump’s attempt to retaliate against major law firms like Perkins Coie and a prominent national security lawyer who displeased him.
Also look out for developments in a series of lawsuits fighting GOP-led redistricting throughout the American South in the wake of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
Rising This Week’s listings of upcoming court hearings and opportunities for civic engagement is typically a feature for paid subscribers, but this week’s edition has no paywall to call attention to a major protest in Alabama over the dismantling of majority-Black congressional districts.
To support the work in gathering this look-ahead, and to keep this newsletter on the ground where the major news breaks, consider becoming an All Rise News subscriber.
Here are this week’s court listings:
United States v. Allen: Trump’s accused would-be assassin Cole Allen returns to court for a preliminary hearing.
Where: E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse, 333 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.
When: 1:30 p.m. ET
Abrego Garcia v. Noem (Tues., May 12): Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia try to stave off another attempt to deport their client to Liberia, an effort that has failed twice to date.
Where: District of Maryland, 6500 Cherrywood Lane, Greenbelt, Md.
Time: 11 a.m. ET
Zaid v. Executive Office of the President (Thurs., May 14): The D.C. Circuit hears a pair of cases over Trump’s effort to retaliate against attorneys and law firms that he doesn’t like, including national security lawyer Mark Zaid and Perkins Coie.
Where: E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse, 333 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.
Remote Access: Live audio available on YouTube.
Time: 9:30 a.m. ET
In the streets
Almost immediately after the Supreme Court gutted the remnants of the Voting Rights Act in the Callais decision, GOP-led state governments throughout the American South raced to redraw maps to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts.
Those gerrymandered maps are now being challenged in court in Louisiana, Florida, and Tennessee. The state of Alabama asked the Supreme Court to approve a 2023 map that was previously blocked for discriminating against Black voters. Expect those cases to proceed quickly.
Outside the courts, opposition to the erasure of opportunity districts is shaping up in the streets, including the most historic sites of the Civil Rights Movement.
On Saturday, the first National Day of Action on this topic will take place under the banner All Roads Lead to the South, and organizers broadly announced the following events.
9 a.m. | Selma (Faith leaders gather at the Edmund Pettus Bridge for prayer)
1–5 p.m. | Montgomery (National Mass Rally at the Alabama State Capitol)
Visit www.allroadsleadtothesouth.com for more details.
All Rise News will report more information about the National Day of Action as details become public.
Thanks, Adam. … I had to look up where Eswatini is. … Any buzz (drone whirring sound) on the Anthropic case? … Have a great week.
Giddyup!
Abrego Garcia should name you as his second line of defense!