A federal judge on Thursday ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia to be immediately released from immigration custody.
“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 in Maryland wrote in her opinion explaining her order.
“As before, Abrego Garcia’s case demands judicial intervention to ensure that” government officials “choose constitutionally permissible means of implementing” immigration law, she wrote. “Because Abrego Garcia has been held in ICE detention to effectuate third-country removal absent a lawful removal order, his requested relief is proper,” she wrote.
The government illegally sent Abrego to El Salvador in March, then said it would never bring him back him to the U.S., and then returned him to the U.S. in June to face criminal charges for allegedly transported undocumented immigrants illegally. Abrego has pleaded not guilty to the charges and argued they should be thrown out on the grounds that they’re unconstitutionally vindictive.
The government has simultaneously been trying to remove him from the country again, which has prompted litigation over which so-called third country he can be sent to. He had previously secured an order preventing his removal to his native country of El Salvador, which made it illegal to have sent him there in March.
In her ruling Thursday, Xinis said the government didn’t have a lawful order to remove him to a third country, so it can’t justify his continued detention. She wrote that while government officials “may eventually get it right, they have not as of today.”
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