Kilmar Abrego Garcia freed from immigration detention on judge’s order — returns to Maryland home
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was set free from immigration detention on Thursday following a judge’s order, a win for the man who was wrongfully deported to a notorious penitentiary in El Salvador and turned into a symbol of the Trump administration’s hard‑line immigration policy.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement at once to release Abrego Garcia, after finding that federal agents had taken him back into custody once more after he had already returned to the United States under no legal justification.
He hurried back to his home in Beltsville, Maryland wearing a white shirt and an orange hat just minutes after the 5 p.m. deadline the judge set for an update on his release.
Abrego Garcia has lived in Maryland for many years, raising his American wife and child after first entering the country illegally as a teenager.
The former detainee was held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, which sits about 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
His lawyer, Simon Sandoval‑Moshenberg, told reporters that he was unsure what the next stage would be but was ready to fight any future deportation attempts.
“The government still has plenty of tools in their toolbox, plenty of tricks up their sleeve,” he said, adding that he was fully prepared to “to make sure there is a fair trial.”
The Department of Homeland Security blasted the decision, vowing to appeal and labeling the ruling “naked judicial activism”—a phrase the agency used to criticize the judge who had been appointed during the Obama years.
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS’s assistant secretary, said the order had no legal basis and that the department would “continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”
Judge Xinis’s order also noted that federal officials “did not just stonewall” the court and “They affirmatively misled the tribunal.”
Her comments referred to four African countries that officials had cited as potential destinations for Abrego Garcia, none of which had a concrete commitment to accept him, as well as a false claim that Costa Rica had withdrawn its offer.
“Costa Rica had never wavered in its commitment to receive Abrego Garcia, just as Abrego Garcia never wavered in his commitment to resettle there,” the judge wrote.
She rejected the government’s argument that she lacked jurisdiction over a final removal order because, in her view, no such order had ever been filed.
Abrego Garcia is now urging the immigration court to reopen his case so he can pursue asylum in the United States, while also facing criminal charges for human smuggling in Tennessee.
He has pleaded not guilty and has asked a federal judge to dismiss the case on the grounds that the prosecution is vindictive; an evidentiary hearing has been scheduled after the judge found some evidence that the charges “may be vindictive.”
The judge noted several unsettling statements from officials in the Trump era, including a comment by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that seemed to suggest the Justice Department had charged Abrego Garcia because he had won his wrongful‑deportation case.
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