Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March of last year, will learn next month whether the federal government might re-detain him.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March of last year, will learn next month whether the federal government might re-detain him.
Maryland federal Judge Paula Xinis says she will rule by Feb. 12 whether the removal order granted a year ago was a final one. If she determines it was, the government could take him back into custody.
In the meantime, Abrego Garcia, 30, is spending time with his American wife, Jennifer, and other family members in Maryland. He was released from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility just before Christmas, according to his attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg.
“For him the homecoming was incredibly emotional,” said Sandoval-Moshenberg. “This is a person who spent nearly all of 2025 in a jail or detention center.”
Abrego Garcia immigrated illegally from El Salvador to the United States as a teenager, and had since been living and working in Maryland.
He was first detained in March 2025 and then mistakenly deported to El Salvador, despite an order mandating that he not be sent there for safety reasons.
The government then returned him in June, only to subsequently take him back into custody and charge him with human trafficking in Tennessee. Abrego Garcia denies those charges; a trial for those charges was delayed pending the resolution of his deportation status.
The Donald Trump administration has named a number of places Abrego Garcia could be deported, including several nations in Africa. His preference would be to be deported to Costa Rica, where he would not be in fear of being re-deported to El Salvador.
Costa Rica has already agreed to grant Abrego Garcia legal refugee status.
“It’s been the U.S. government that’s keeping him in this country,” said Sandoval-Moshenberg. “Our argument isn’t that he can’t be deported; our argument is that he must be deported. But he must be deported to Costa Rica because that’s the country that’s offered him safety.”
The Trump administration has insisted, without proof, that Abrego Garcia is a violent gang member. He has said he has never been a member of MS-13 or any other criminal gang.
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A newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia revealed that high-level Justice Department officials pushed for his indictment.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia leaves a check-in at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Baltimore Field Office the day after a federal judge ordered his release from a detention in Pennsylvania, on December 12, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia leaves a check-in at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Baltimore Field Office the day after a federal judge ordered his release from a detention in Pennsylvania, on December 12, in Baltimore, Maryland.
(CNN) — Internal Justice Department files “suggest” that top officials in Washington, DC, worked with federal prosecutors in Nashville to prosecute Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he fought his wrongful deportation to El Salvador, a federal judge said in a newly unsealed ruling.
The Dec. 3 opinion from U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw made public on Tuesday is the latest sign that the Justice Department is increasingly on the defense in the case. Abrego Garcia is seeking to have the charges dismissed based on his claim that he’s the victim of a selective and vindictive prosecution that is the result of meddling by officials in Washington
Such bids are extremely hard to win, but the ruling underscored the seriousness with which Crenshaw is scrutinizing Abrego Garcia’s claims. The judge ordered prosecutors to turn the documents over to Abrego Garcia’s team for review.
“The court recognizes the government’s assertion of privileges, but Abrego’s due process right to a non-vindictive prosecution outweighs the blanket evidentiary privileges asserted by the government,” Crenshaw said in the ruling.
The documents, he wrote in the nine-page decision, “suggest” that Robert McGuire, the top federal prosecutor in the Middle District of Tennessee, “was not a solitary decision-maker” in his office’s decision to bring human smuggling charges against Abrego Garcia, as the government has argued, but instead worked with others in DC “who may or may not have acted with an improper motivation” earlier this year when the case was brought together.
“The documents that must be produced connect back to (Deputy Attorney General Todd) Blanche because the documents suggest that (Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash) Singh had a leading role in the government’s decision to prosecute and Singh works in Blanche’s office,” the opinion read.
“The government’s documents may contradict its prior representations that the decision to prosecute was made locally and that there were no outside influences,” Crenshaw wrote, pointing to several communications between Singh and McGuire this spring, when Abrego Garcia was still being held in the mega-prison in El Salvador he was deported to from Maryland in mid-March.
Those communications were taking place as the government resisted a Maryland judge’s order to work to return Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. At that time, his case grabbed national attention and came to symbolize the administration’s hard-line immigration policies and approach to adverse court rulings.
CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
Abrego Garcia is arguing that the criminal charges, which stemmed from a Tennessee traffic stop years earlier, were brought in retaliation after he challenged his unlawful removal to El Salvador earlier this year. Though he’s a Salvadoran national, an immigration judge said in 2019 that he could not be sent back to his home country because he feared gang violence there.
In one email sent by Singh in late April to McGuire, “Singh made clear that Abrego’s criminal prosecution was a ‘top priority’ for the Deputy Attorney General’s office (Blanche),” the judge wrote.
An email from McGuire in mid-May to his staff said that Blanche and one of his deputies “would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later,” according to the ruling.
Abrego Garcia was ultimately brought back to the U.S. in June to face the human smuggling case. He is on pretrial release in Maryland. His attorneys declined to comment on Crenshaw’s ruling.
“Judge Crenshaw is conveying that the documents he reviewed reveal that this prosecution was initiated by the DOJ,” said retired federal Judge John Jones, who added that this kind of case is not one typically initiated by department leaders in Washington.
“Although vindictive prosecution motions are rarely granted, every sign points to this one succeeding,” Jones said.
Abrego Garcia has previously argued that public statements by Blanche about the criminal case are evidence of the government’s decision to pursue him for illegitimate reasons, and Crenshaw said in a major ruling in October that those statements are problematic for prosecutors.
The documents sought by the defense, Crenshaw said in the December ruling, “must be disclosed given Abrego’s reliance on Blanche’s public statements and to allow the parties to present their arguments on how these documents may or may not support the motion to dismiss.”
A major hearing over Abrego Garcia’s effort to get the pair of charges tossed is set for late January. His trial, which had been scheduled for next month, has been postponed and a new date has not been set.
A newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia reveals that high-level Justice Department officials pushed for his indictment, calling it a “top priority,” only after he was mistakenly deported and then ordered returned to the U.S.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — U.S. immigration officials do not plan to detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia again as long as a judge’s order banning it stands, according to a Tuesday court filing.
The plans by President Donald Trump’s administration are the latest in the saga over the Salvadoran citizen’s case that has become a lightning rod for both sides of the immigration debate as he fights to remain in the U.S. after a mistaken deportation to his home country, where he was imprisoned.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did make clear they would detain Abrego Garcia if the order was lifted, Liana J. Castano, assistant director for field operations, wrote in the filing.
Trump officials have accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang, but he has vehemently denied the accusations and has no criminal record. The administration brought him back to the U.S. in June under a court order, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis earlier this month questioned whether government officials could be trusted to follow orders barring them from taking Abrego Garcia back into immigration custody or deporting him.
A Justice Department push to indict
Earlier Tuesday, a newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Abrego Garcia revealed that high-level Justice Department officials pushed for his indictment, calling it a “top priority,” only after he was mistakenly deported and then ordered returned to the U.S.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty in federal court to the human smuggling charges. He is seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution is vindictive, arguing the Trump administration is targeting him as punishment for the embarrassment of his mistaken deportation.
To support that argument, he has asked the government to turn over documents that reveal how the decision was made to prosecute him in 2025 for an incident that occurred in 2022.
Abrego Garcia had recently been in immigration custody for three months before Xinis ordered his release on Dec. 11. In that time, the government said it planned to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia.
In her Dec. 11 order, Xinis found that immigration officials had no viable plan to remove Abrego Garcia from the U.S. and said he could not be held indefinitely. She issued a separate order barring ICE from re-detaining him, at least for the time being. After a hearing on the issue, Xinis ordered the government to file the brief they released Tuesday outlining whether they planned to detain Abrego Garcia again.
Abrego Garcia’s human smuggling case stems from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee where he was pulled over for speeding with nine passengers in the car. State troopers discussed the possibility of human smuggling among themselves. However, he was ultimately allowed to leave with only a warning. The case was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations, but there is no record of any effort to charge him until April 2025, according to court records.
The newly unsealed Dec. 3 order from U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw compelled the government to provide some documents to Abrego Garcia and his attorneys, although it does not give a lot of detail on their contents.
Claims of a ‘vindictive’ prosecution
Earlier, Crenshaw found that there was “some evidence” that the prosecution of Abrego Garcia could be vindictive. He specifically cited a statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on a Fox News program that seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice charged Abrego Garcia because he had won his wrongful deportation case.
Rob McGuire, who was the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee until late December, argued that those statements were irrelevant because he alone made the decision to prosecute, and he has no animus against Abrego Garcia.
In the unsealed order, Crenshaw writes, “Some of the documents suggest not only that McGuire was not a solitary decision-maker, but he in fact reported to others in DOJ and the decision to prosecute Abrego may have been a joint decision.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee released a statement saying: “The emails cited in Judge Crenshaw’s order, specifically Mr. McGuire’s email on May 15, 2025, confirm that the ultimate decision on whether to prosecute was made by career prosecutors based on the facts, evidence, and established DOJ practice. Communications with the Deputy Attorney General’s Office about a high-profile case are both required and routine.”
The email referenced was from McGuire to his staff saying Blanche “would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later,” according to Crenshaw’s order.
The order also shows that Aakash Singh, who works under Blanche in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, contacted McGuire about Abrego Garcia’s case on April 27, the same day that McGuire received a file on the case from Homeland Security Investigations. That was several days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor on April 10.
On April 30, Singh said in an email to McGuire that the prosecution was a “top priority” for the Deputy Attorney General’s Office, according to the order. Singh and McGuire continued to communicate about the prosecution. On May 18, Singh wrote to McGuire and others to hold the draft indictment until they got “clearance” to file it. “The implication is that ‘clearance’ would come from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General,” Crenshaw writes.
A hearing on the motion to dismiss the human smuggling case on the basis of vindictive prosecution is scheduled for Jan. 28.
___
Associated Press journalist Hannah Schoenbaum contributed from Salt Lake City.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia can spend Christmas with his family after spending much of the year in custody.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia speaks during a rally ahead of a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge’s order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)(AP/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Kilmar Abrego Garcia speaks during a rally ahead of a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge’s order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)(AP/Stephanie Scarbrough)
BALTIMORE (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia can spend Christmas with his family after spending much of the year in custody.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in Maryland, issued an order late on Monday requiring government attorneys to file a brief by Dec. 26 on whether they plan to take him back into immigration custody, and under what legal authority they would do so. His attorneys have until Dec. 30 to respond.
A temporary restraining order that bars Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining him remains in place in the meantime.
“This decision means Kilmar gets to sleep in his own bed in the next coming days, without the fear of being separated from his family and community in the middle of the night,” Lydia Walther-Rodriguez, an organizer with the community group CASA, said in an email.
The Salvadoran citizen’s case has become a lightning rod for both sides of the immigration debate as he fights to remain in the U.S. after a mistaken deportation to his home country, where he was imprisoned. Members of President Donald Trump’s administration have accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, but he has vehemently denied the accusations and has no criminal record.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, after concluding he faced danger there from a gang that targeted his family. In March, he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador anyway.
Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, Trump’s Republican administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked the judge to dismiss them.
Abrego Garcia was held in a Tennessee jail for two months before he was freed to await trial in with his family in Maryland. However, he was only free for a weekend before he was detained by ICE. Trump administration officials have said he cannot stay in the U.S.
Over the past few months, government attorneys have threatened to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia. However, officials have made no effort to deport him to the one country he has agreed to go to — Costa Rica. Xinis has even accused the government of misleading her by falsely claiming that Costa Rica was unwilling to take him.
On Dec. 11, Xinis ordered him released from ICE custody, finding that the government had no viable plan to deport him anywhere and could not keep him in detention indefinitely.
A federal judge ordered Friday that U.S. immigration officials could not detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia, hours after his release from immigration detention.Abrego Garcia was appearing Friday morning for a scheduled appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, some 14 hours after he was released from detention on a judge’s orders. His lawyers asked the judge to block authorities from detaining him again.Officials cannot re-detain him until the court conducts a hearing on the motion for the temporary restraining order, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland said. She wrote that Abrego Garcia is likely to succeed on the merits of any further request for relief from ICE detention.“For the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice, the Court’s narrowly crafted remedy cannot be so quickly and easily upended without further briefing and consideration,” she wrote.Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He was last taken into custody in August during a similar check-in.Abrego Garcia on Friday stopped at a news conference outside the building, escorted by a group of supporters chanting “We are all Kilmar!”“I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”He urged people to keep fighting.“I stand here today with my head held high and I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me,” Abrego Garcia said. “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws and I believe that this injustice will come to an end.”After Abrego Garcia spoke, he went through security at the field office, escorted by supporters.The agency freed him just before 5 p.m. on Thursday in response to a ruling from Xinis, who wrote federal authorities detained him after his return to the United States without any legal basis.Mistakenly deported and then returnedAbrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, where he faces danger from a gang that targeted his family.While he was allowed to live and work in the U.S. under ICE supervision, he was not given residency status. Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported and held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record.Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, Trump’s Republican administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked a federal judge there to dismiss them.A lawsuit to block removal from the USThe 2019 settlement found he had a “well founded fear” of danger in El Salvador if he was deported there. So instead ICE has been seeking to deport him to a series of African countries. Abrego Garcia has sued, claiming the Trump administration is illegally using the removal process to punish him for the public embarrassment caused by his deportation.In her order releasing Abrego Garcia, Xinis wrote that federal authorities “did not just stonewall” the court, “They affirmatively misled the tribunal.” Xinis also rejected the government’s argument that she lacked jurisdiction to intervene on a final removal order for Abrego Garcia, because she found no final order had been filed.ICE freed Abrego Garcia from Moshannon Valley Processing Center, about 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday just before the deadline Xinis gave the government to provide an update on Abrego Garcia’s release.He returned home to Maryland a few hours later.Immigration check-inCheck-ins are how ICE keeps track of some people who are released by the government to pursue asylum or other immigration cases as they make their way through a backlogged court system. The appointments were once routine but many people have been detained at their check-ins since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he’s prepared to defend his client against further deportation efforts.“The government still has plenty of tools in their toolbox, plenty of tricks up their sleeve,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said, adding he fully expects the government to again take steps to deport his client. “We’re going to be there to fight to make sure there is a fair trial.”The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized Xinis’ order and vowed to appeal, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.“This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary.Sandoval-Moshenberg said the judge made it clear that the government can’t detain someone indefinitely without legal authority and that his client “has endured more than anyone should ever have to.”Abrego Garcia has also applied for asylum in the U.S. in immigration court.Charges in TennesseeAbrego Garcia was hit with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling charges when the U.S. government brought him back from El Salvador. Prosecutors alleged he accepted money to transport within the United States people who were in the country illegally.The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.
BALTIMORE —
A federal judge ordered Friday that U.S. immigration officials could not detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia, hours after his release from immigration detention.
Abrego Garcia was appearing Friday morning for a scheduled appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, some 14 hours after he was released from detention on a judge’s orders. His lawyers asked the judge to block authorities from detaining him again.
Officials cannot re-detain him until the court conducts a hearing on the motion for the temporary restraining order, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland said. She wrote that Abrego Garcia is likely to succeed on the merits of any further request for relief from ICE detention.
“For the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice, the Court’s narrowly crafted remedy cannot be so quickly and easily upended without further briefing and consideration,” she wrote.
Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He was last taken into custody in August during a similar check-in.
Abrego Garcia on Friday stopped at a news conference outside the building, escorted by a group of supporters chanting “We are all Kilmar!”
“I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”
He urged people to keep fighting.
“I stand here today with my head held high and I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me,” Abrego Garcia said. “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws and I believe that this injustice will come to an end.”
After Abrego Garcia spoke, he went through security at the field office, escorted by supporters.
The agency freed him just before 5 p.m. on Thursday in response to a ruling from Xinis, who wrote federal authorities detained him after his return to the United States without any legal basis.
Mistakenly deported and then returned
Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, where he faces danger from a gang that targeted his family.
While he was allowed to live and work in the U.S. under ICE supervision, he was not given residency status. Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported and held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record.
Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, Trump’s Republican administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked a federal judge there to dismiss them.
A lawsuit to block removal from the US
The 2019 settlement found he had a “well founded fear” of danger in El Salvador if he was deported there. So instead ICE has been seeking to deport him to a series of African countries. Abrego Garcia has sued, claiming the Trump administration is illegally using the removal process to punish him for the public embarrassment caused by his deportation.
In her order releasing Abrego Garcia, Xinis wrote that federal authorities “did not just stonewall” the court, “They affirmatively misled the tribunal.” Xinis also rejected the government’s argument that she lacked jurisdiction to intervene on a final removal order for Abrego Garcia, because she found no final order had been filed.
ICE freed Abrego Garcia from Moshannon Valley Processing Center, about 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday just before the deadline Xinis gave the government to provide an update on Abrego Garcia’s release.
He returned home to Maryland a few hours later.
Immigration check-in
Check-ins are how ICE keeps track of some people who are released by the government to pursue asylum or other immigration cases as they make their way through a backlogged court system. The appointments were once routine but many people have been detained at their check-ins since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he’s prepared to defend his client against further deportation efforts.
“The government still has plenty of tools in their toolbox, plenty of tricks up their sleeve,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said, adding he fully expects the government to again take steps to deport his client. “We’re going to be there to fight to make sure there is a fair trial.”
The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized Xinis’ order and vowed to appeal, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.
“This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said the judge made it clear that the government can’t detain someone indefinitely without legal authority and that his client “has endured more than anyone should ever have to.”
Abrego Garcia has also applied for asylum in the U.S. in immigration court.
Charges in Tennessee
Abrego Garcia was hit with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling charges when the U.S. government brought him back from El Salvador. Prosecutors alleged he accepted money to transport within the United States people who were in the country illegally.
The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.
Washington — Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to his Maryland home Thursday night, after a judge ordered the immediate release of the Salvadoran national who was mistakenly deported to his home country earlier this year.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told CBS News on Thursday that he was officially out of Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Pennsylvania. Hours later, he was spotted arriving at his home 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 told CBS News. When he was given similar instructions over the summer, following his release from pretrial detention, he was taken into ICE custody, and there are concerns he could be rearrested Friday on different legal grounds.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis granted Abrego Garcia’s habeas corpus petition seeking release from custody. It’s a significant victory for Abrego Garcia, whose immigration case became a major flashpoint in President Trump’s mass-deportation campaign when he was removed to El Salvador earlier this year. An earlier order had prohibited the U.S. from removing him to his native country because of possible persecution by local gangs.
Xinis, in her order, found that there was no final order of removal from the government to deport Abrego Garcia from the United States, despite the Trump administration’s repeated attempts to remove him.
“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 in Thursday’s order.
“Although respondents may eventually get it right, they have not as of today,” the judge continued. “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 called the judge’s decision “naked judicial activism by an Obama-appointed judge.”
“This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” McLaughlin said.
The Trump administration has been attempting to re-deport Abrego Garcia to the African nations of Uganda, Eswatini or Ghana, but none of the countries have agreed to accept him.
In October, however, the administration informed the court that Liberia had agreed to take Abrego Garcia and was making “final necessary arrangements” for his deportation there.
Sandoval-Moshenbergsaid at the time that unless Liberia guaranteed it would not send Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, deporting him to the West African nation “is no less unlawful than sending him directly” to his home country again.
In November, the Trump administration argued that Abrego Garcia had received significant due process in the U.S. In a court filing, the Justice Department said a U.S. government asylum officer had interviewed Abrego Garcia, who has been in federal immigration detention since late August, and determined he had failed to prove he would face persecution or torture in Liberia.
Xinis heard testimony in October from John Schultz, an ICE official, about the Trump administration’s efforts to remove Abrego Garcia. Schultz said the administration remains in active discussions with Eswatini about removing him there, though the east African country rejected a request to take him.
Schultz said that once the administration has been informed that a third country is willing to accept Abrego Garcia, it could deport him within 72 hours if allowed by the court.
Abrego Garcia has said he is willing to go to Costa Rica and designated the country as his preferred country of removal, and Costa Rica has indicated it would provide him refugee status or residency. But during the hearing Oct. 10, a Justice Department lawyer said there had not been discussions about deporting him there.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia accused the Trump administration of gamesmanship and deliberately seeking to remove him to countries where he could raise claims of reasonable fear of persecution, with the goal of keeping him detained for longer.
Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2011 and has lived in Maryland with his wife and children. But he was arrested by immigration authorities in March and deported there, though he’d been granted the legal status in 2019 that should have prevented his removal to that country.
As part of a civil case Abrego Garcia and his wife brought against the Trump administration, Xinis ordered DHS to facilitate his return to the U.S. But immigration officials resisted doing so for months. Abrego Garcia was brought back to the U.S. in June, but only after a federal grand jury in Tennessee indicted him on two charges of human smuggling, stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop.
Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty, and a judge in Tennessee ordered him to be released on bail ahead of a criminal trial set to begin in January. But he remained in criminal confinement for several more weeks because of concerns from his lawyers that immigration authorities would arrest him upon his release and deport him from the U.S.
He was released from jail in Tennessee in August and returned to Maryland. But days later, he was taken into custody by immigration authorities after being summoned for an interview at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore. The Trump administration notified Abrego Garcia’s lawyers he could be deported to Uganda, though Abrego Garcia expressed fear of persecution and torture, as well as a concern that the Ugandan government would send him back to El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia also filed a new legal challenge to his confinement and the Trump administration’s efforts to deport him for a second time, which Xinis is presiding over. She has blocked immigration officials from removing Abrego Garcia from the U.S., and he had since remained in detention at a facility in Pennsylvania.
At the heart of Abrego Garcia’s challenge is a 2001 Supreme Court case, in which the high court said the government cannot indefinitely detain a person in the U.S. illegally if there is no significant likelihood of removal in the “reasonably foreseeable future.”
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued that he has been in near-continuous confinement since March, when he was deported to El Salvador and held in prisons there. His only period of freedom was for a weekend in August, in between his release from criminal custody in Tennessee and his arrest by immigration authorities in Maryland.
A federal judge in Maryland ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia freed from immigration detention on Thursday while his legal challenge against his deportation moves forward.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be freed from immigration detention while he fights to stay in the U.S., a judge ruled Thursday, handing a major victory to the immigrant whose wrongful deportation to a notorious prison in El Salvador made him a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to let Abrego Garcia go immediately, writing that federal authorities had detained him again after his return to the United States without any legal basis.
“For this reason, the Court will GRANT Abrego Garcia’s Petition for immediate release from ICE custody,” the judge wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized the decision and vowed to appeal, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.
“This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary. The judge gave prosecutors until 5 p.m. EST to formally respond to the release order.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said the judge made it clear that the government can’t detain someone indefinitely without legal authority and that his client “has endured more than anyone should ever have to.”
“At the same time, we are mindful of the government’s past conduct in this case and will stay vigilant to ensure that nothing undermines the court’s decision,” he said in a statement.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national with an American wife and child, has lived in Maryland for years but entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager. An immigration judge ruled in 2019 that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger from a gang that targeted his family. When he was mistakenly sent there in March, his case became a rallying point for those who oppose President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement actions.
A court later ordered his return to the United States. Since he cannot be removed to El Salvador, ICE has been seeking to deport him to a series of African countries. His federal suit claims the Trump administration is illegally using the removal process to punish Abrego Garcia for the public embarrassment caused by his deportation.
In her order releasing Abrego Garcia, Xinis wrote that federal authorities “did not just stonewall” the court, “They affirmatively misled the tribunal.” The judge was referencing the successive list of four African countries that officials had sought to remove Abrego Garcia seemingly without commitments from those countries, as well as officials’ affirmations that Costa Rica withdrew its offer to accept him, a claim later proven untrue.
“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,” the judge wrote.
Xinis also rejected the government’s argument that she lacked jurisdiction to intervene on a final removal order for Abrego Garcia, because she found no final order had been filed.
Separately, Abrego Garcia is asking an immigration court to reopen his case so he can seek asylum in the United States.
He is also criminally charged in Tennessee, where he has pleaded not guilty to human smuggling. He has asked the federal court to dismiss the case, arguing the prosecution is vindictive. His defense attorney in Tennessee, Sean Hecker, declined to comment.
A judge in that case has ordered an evidentiary hearing after previously finding some evidence that the charges “may be vindictive.” The judge also noted several statements by Trump administration officials that “raise cause for concern,” including a statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that seemed to suggest the Justice Department charged Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful deportation case. ___
Loller reported from Nashville, Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio and Lauer reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press reporter Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.
Greenbelt, Md. — A federal judge on Thursday expressed frustration with the Trump administration over the testimony provided by a top immigration official who was called to address the steps the Trump administration has taken to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the West African country of Liberia.
John Cantú, a senior official at Enforcement and Removal Operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was the latest government witness to appear before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to answer questions about the potential removal of Abrego Garcia. But in each instance, Xinis has pushed back on the substance of the testimony.
“Today was a zero in my view,” she said of Cantú’s appearance.
Abrego Garcia is challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to remove him from the U.S. ahead of his criminal trial on human smuggling charges next year. Immigration authorities are now seeking to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia, but an order from Xinis that’s been in place since August prevents the government from removing him.
Xinis did not rule on Abrego Garcia’s bid for release but said she would move quickly to address his challenge.
Cantú was summoned to testify after submitting a declaration to the court about a discussion between the State Department and the Costa Rican government about possibly accepting Abrego Garcia, as well as his potential deportation to Liberia. Abrego Garcia has designated Costa Rica as a country he is willing to be removed to, but the Trump administration has instead sought to deport him to a series of African countries.
Cantú said that if the Trump administration had the green light to remove Abrego Garcia from the U.S., the government would schedule a commercial flight or charter a plane bound for Liberia. He said that the Liberian government provided assurances to the State Department that Abrego Garcia would not be persecuted, tortured or sent back to El Salvador.
Asked about the declaration filed with the court, Cantú said he included in it information that was provided to him by the State Department.
Xinis repeatedly expressed frustration with the quality of the testimony from Cantú and at least two other federal officials who have appeared before her to answer questions about the Trump administration’s plans to deport Abrego Garcia.
She said Cantú’s answers were “the worst of all.”
“I’ve had three witnesses do this. This witness knew nothing. He didn’t know the meaning of the words in his own affidavit,” she said. “That’s extremely troubling.”
Xinis also questioned Justice Department lawyers as to whether a final order of removal had ever been issued for Abrego Garcia. A U.S. immigration judge in 2019 denied Abrego Garcia’s bid for asylum but granted him a withholding of removal, which bars immigration authorities from deporting him to his home country of El Salvador.
But Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said they have not seen a final order of removal, which they said bolstered their argument for releasing him from immigration custody.
Abrego Garcia’s case has been a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown since the Salvadoran immigrant was removed from where he lived in Maryland to his native country in March. He was sent to El Salvador despite the immigration judge’s 2019 decision.
He faces deportation proceedings because he entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager in 2011.
In June, Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. after he was detained in El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison to face two felony charges of human smuggling. He has denied those charges.
Ahead of Abrego Garcia’s criminal trial that is scheduled to begin next year, the Trump administration has repeatedly sought to deport him from the U.S. again, proposing to send him to countries including Uganda, Eswatini and now, Liberia.
The Trump administration is urging Xinis to lift her August order barring Abrego Garcia’s deportation and allow the government to remove him to Liberia, arguing that the administration has gone through all the necessary steps to deport Abrego Garcia.
The Justice Department said that Abrego Garcia, who remains in federal immigration detention, was interviewed in October by a U.S. government asylum officer, and that officer determined that he failed to prove he would face persecution or torture in Liberia. The Justice Department said any additional due process would be unwarranted.
Abrego Garcia’s “claims are procedurally barred multiple times over and fail on the merits in any event,” the Justice Department said in its filing. “This Court should therefore dissolve its preliminary injunction and permit the government to remove Petitioner to Liberia.”
In addition, the Justice Department submitted declarations from U.S. officials stating that Liberia has made “sufficient and credible” assurances that Abrego Garcia would not be harmed there or removed from Liberia to another country where he potentially could be persecuted.
In a press release late last month, Liberia’s government said it had agreed to receive Abrego Garcia on “a strictly humanitarian and temporary basis,” following a U.S. request.
Andrew Rossman, a lawyer for Abrego Garcia, raised concerns about the lack of detail surrounding how long he could remain in Liberia and what would happen once that clock ran out.
“Is Liberia going to send him to yet another unnamed country?” he asked.
Abrego Garcia and his legal team have repeatedly challenged the government’s attempts to deport him to African nations, claiming fear of persecution or torture. They have also argued that the Trump administration’s repeated efforts to send Abrego Garcia to Africa is a form of retaliation, and Abrego Garcia should instead be sent to Costa Rica.
They noted the government had offered to send Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica this summer, but only if he pleaded guilty to the federal human smuggling charges he faces in Tennessee. The Costa Rican government initially said it was willing to accept Abrego Garcia after the conclusion of any criminal sentence he would serve, if convicted of the human smuggling charges.
But Justice Department lawyers said earlier this month that the State Department had assessed that the Costa Rican government had reversed course and wouldn’t take Abrego Garcia “at this time without further negotiations” and additional commitments from the U.S.
Drew Ensign, a Justice Department lawyer, said that continuing negotiations with Costa Rica is “not something that could easily be done.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had also “determined that it would be preferential in the interests of the United States,” to send Abrego Garcia to an African country,” Ensign said.
“It’s so odd to me, it’s so odd. And that’s being polite,” Xinis replied, citing the “empty word salad” declaration she got from Cantú and the Trump administration’s lack of willingness to move forward with Costa Rica as the final deportation spot for Abrego Garcia.
But Rossman questioned the government’s assertion that Costa Rica is off the table and told the judge “there is no evidence at all that Costa Rica is unwilling to take my client.”
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have argued that federal immigration officials are seeking to punish their client and denying him due process.
“The timeline suggests a pattern: when the Government received orders it disliked in Abrego Garcia’s civil case challenging his unlawful removal to El Salvador; it initiated a criminal prosecution in retaliation; and when it received orders it disliked in Abrego Garcia’s criminal case, it initiated third-country removal efforts in retaliation,” the attorneys said in a response to the Justice Department’s motion.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have also asked Xinis to keep her block on his deportation in place “unless and until an immigration judge concurs” with the Trump administration’s determinations.
A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is set to testify Thursday about the steps the Trump administration has taken to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the West African country of Liberia.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador, continues to fight in court against his potential deportation to a third country. CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador, continues to fight in court against his potential deportation to a third country. CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports.
A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official testified Thursday about the steps the Trump administration has taken to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the West African country of Liberia, as the Trump administration continues its push to remove him from the U.S. ahead of his criminal trial on human smuggling charges next year.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who is presiding over Abrego Garcia’s challenge to the administration’s efforts to deport him, had ordered the immigration official, John Cantú, to testify in-person. Cantú is a top official at Enforcement and Removal Operations at ICE and had submitted to the court a declaration about a discussion between the State Department and the Costa Rican government about possibly accepting Abrego Garcia, as well as his potential deportation to Liberia.
Cantú said that if the Trump administration had the green-light to remove Abrego Garcia from the U.S., the government would schedule a commercial flight or charter a plane bound for Liberia. He said that the Liberian government provided assurances to the State Department that Abrego Garcia would not be persecuted, tortured or sent back to El Salvador.
Asked about the declaration filed with the court, Cantú said he included in it information that was provided to him by the State Department.
Abrego Garcia has designated Costa Rica as a country he is willing to be deported to. An order from Xinis has been in place since August that prevents the Trump administration from deporting Abrego Garcia from the U.S.
But earlier this month, the Trump administration urged Xinis to lift that order and allow the government to remove him to Liberia, arguing that the administration has gone through all the necessary steps to deport Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia’s case has been a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown since the Salvadoran immigrant was removed from where he lived in Maryland to his native country in March. He was sent to El Salvador even though in 2019, an immigration judge granted him a legal status known as withholding of removal because of concerns Abrego Garcia could be persecuted by gangs there.
He faces deportation proceedings because he entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager in 2011.
In June, Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. after he was detained in El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison to face two felony charges of human smuggling. He has denied those charges.
Before Abrego Garcia’s criminal trial is scheduled to begin next year, the Trump administration has repeatedly sought to deport Abrego Garcia from the U.S. again, proposing to send him to several African countries, including Uganda, Eswatini and now, Liberia.
The Justice Department said that Abrego Garcia, who remains in federal immigration detention, was interviewed in October by a U.S. government asylum officer, and that officer determined that he failed to prove he would face persecution or torture in Liberia. The Justice Department said any additional due process would be unwarranted.
Abrego Garcia’s “claims are procedurally barred multiple times over and fail on the merits in any event,” the Justice Department said in its filing. “This Court should therefore dissolve its preliminary injunction and permit the government to remove Petitioner to Liberia.”
In addition, the Justice Department submitted declarations from U.S. officials stating that Liberia has made “sufficient and credible” assurances that Abrego Garcia would not be harmed there or removed from Liberia to another country where he potentially could be persecuted.
In a press release late last month, Liberia’s government said it had agreed to receive Abrego Garcia on “a strictly humanitarian and temporary basis,” following a U.S. request.
Abrego Garcia and his legal team have repeatedly challenged the government’s attempts to deport him to African nations, claiming fear of persecution or torture. They have also argued that the Trump administration’s repeated efforts to send Abrego Garcia to Africa is a form of retaliation, and Abrego Garcia should instead be sent to Costa Rica.
They noted the government had offered to send Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica this summer, but only if he pleaded guilty to the federal human smuggling charges he faces in Tennessee.
“The timeline suggests a pattern: when the Government received orders it disliked in Abrego Garcia’s civil case challenging his unlawful removal to El Salvador; it initiated a criminal prosecution in retaliation; and when it received orders it disliked in Abrego Garcia’s criminal case, it initiated third-country removal efforts in retaliation,” the attorneys said in a response to the Justice Department’s motion.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have also asked Xinis to keep her block on his deportation in place “unless and until an immigration judge concurs” with the Trump administration’s determinations.
The Trump administration late Friday urged a federal judge in Maryland to allow immigration officials to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the West African country of Liberia, saying the U.S. government has cleared the final legal hurdle in the deportation process.
Abrego Garcia’s case has been at the center of the national debate over President Trump’s immigration crackdown ever since he was deported to El Salvador in March, in violation of a federal immigration judge’s order that barred his deportation to his native country. After being held in detention facilities in El Salvador for months, including a notorious mega-prison known as CECOT, Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. in June, only to face federal criminal charges of human smuggling. He has denied those charges.
While a trial on those criminal charges has yet to commence, the Trump administration has mounted an aggressive effort to deport Abrego Garcia from the U.S. a second time, proposing to send him to several far-flung African countries, including Uganda, Eswatini and most recently, Liberia.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador earlier this year, arrives for a check-in at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Baltimore, Maryland, US, on Aug. 25, 2025.
Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Justice Department filed a motion on Friday asking U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis to scrap a ruling she issued this summer barring the government from deporting Abrego Garcia, arguing all legal avenues to contest his deportation have been exhausted.
On Oct. 28, the Justice Department said, a U.S. government asylum officer interviewed Abrego Garcia, who remains in federal immigration detention, and determined he had failed to prove he would face persecution or torture in Liberia.
Any additional due process steps for Abrego Garcia are unwarranted, the Justice Department argued.
“Petitioner’s claims are procedurally barred multiple times over and fail on the merits in any event,” the Justice Department said in its filing. “This Court should therefore dissolve its preliminary injunction and permit the government to remove Petitioner to Liberia.”
The Trump administration submitted declarations from top U.S. officials asserting that Liberia has made “sufficient and credible” assurances that Abrego Garcia will not be harmed there or sent to another nation where he would be persecuted. In a press release late last month, Liberia’s government said it had agreed to receive Abrego Garcia on “a strictly humanitarian and temporary basis,” following a U.S. request.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, however, argued in their own court filing on Friday that the interview conducted by a U.S. asylum officer last month did not amount to sufficient due process.
“The Government insists that the unreasoned determination of a single immigration officer—who concluded that Abrego Garcia failed to establish that it is ‘more likely than not’ that he will be persecuted or tortured in Liberia— satisfies due process. It does not,” they wrote.
His lawyers also argued the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to send Abrego Garcia to Africa — instead of Costa Rica, which has agreed to offer him refugee status — is a form of retaliation. They noted the government offered to send Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica this summer but only if he pleaded guilty to the federal human smuggling charges he faces in Tennessee.
“The timeline suggests a pattern: when the Government received orders it disliked in Abrego Garcia’s civil case challenging his unlawful removal to El Salvador; it initiated a criminal prosecution in retaliation; and when it received orders it disliked in Abrego Garcia’s criminal case, it initiated third-country removal efforts in retaliation,” the attorneys said.
The lawyers asked Xinis, the federal judge in Maryland, to prohibit the Trump administration from deporting Abrego Garcia to Liberia “unless and until an immigration judge concurs” with the determination made by the asylum officer who interviewed him. They said that review should consider the possibility that their client could be returned to El Salvador after being sent to Liberia.
Abrego Garcia first came to the U.S. in 2011, when he was 16. According to court documents, he entered the country illegally. In 2019, Abrego Garcia was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an encounter with local police outside of a Maryland Home Depot. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said he went there looking for work.
Court documents show an immigration judge initially denied Abrego Garcia’s release on bond, partially due to information submitted by the government that it said tied him to the MS-13 gang. The judge’s bond denial, upheld by an immigration appeals board, mentioned information from an informant whom the government deemed to be credible. Abrego Garcia has denied being part of a gang.
Abrego Garcia was ultimately released from ICE custody later in 2019 after another immigration judge granted him “withholding of removal,” barring his deportation to El Salvador due to concerns he could be targeted by gangs there. However, he was also issued a deportation order based on his illegal entry into the U.S.
Earlier this year, Abrego Garcia was again arrested by ICE, before being deported to El Salvador in March, as part of a high-profile deportation effort that sent several hundred Venezuelan and Salvadoran men accused of having gang ties to the CECOT prison. The Trump administration conceded in federal court that the deportation had been a mistake due to the 2019 withholding of removal order but Abrego Garcia nevertheless remained detained in El Salvador for months.
After being returned to the U.S. in June, Abrego Garcia was held in federal criminal custody, pending the start of his trial. After a federal judge in Tennessee ordered his release from pre-trial detention later in the summer, he was able to see his U.S. citizen child and wife in Maryland over a weekend. But his freedom was short-lived. In late August, Abrego Garcia was instructed to check in to the ICE field office in Baltimore, where he was again taken into custody.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation helped galvanize opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, has hearings on Dec. 8-9 in the human smuggling case against him in Tennessee.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation helped galvanize opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, has hearings on Dec. 8-9 in the human smuggling case against him in Tennessee.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw will hear evidence on motions from the defense asking him to dismiss the charges and throw out some of the evidence. The hearing was originally scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. A brief entry from the judge in the electronic docket does not explain the reason for the change after a nonpublic status conference between the judge and the attorneys on Friday. However, the two sides have been fighting over what documents and testimony the government will be required to provide to Abrego Garcia as he tries to prove the charges against him were motivated by a desire to punish him for the embarrassment of his mistaken deportation.
Here’s what to know about the latest developments in the case:
Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia?
Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, where he faces danger from a gang that targeted his family.
While he was allowed to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision, he was not given residency status. Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported and held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record.
Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, Trump’s Republican administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked Crenshaw to dismiss them.
What are the charges?
Abrego Garcia is charged with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling, with prosecutors claiming he accepted money to transport within the United States people who were in the country illegally.
The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.
What is the motion to dismiss about?
Abrego Garcia has asked Crenshaw to dismiss the smuggling charges on the grounds of “selective or vindictive prosecution.”
In a recent ruling, Crenshaw found “some evidence that the prosecution against him may be vindictive” and said many statements by Trump administration officials “raise cause for concern.” Crenshaw specifically cited a statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, on a Fox News Channel program, that seemed to suggest the Justice Department charged Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful-deportation case.
The two sides have been sparring over whether senior Justice Department officials, including Blanche, can be required to testify in the case.
Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Rob McGuire has argued in court filings that it doesn’t matter what members of the Trump administration have said about Abrego Garcia.
“The relevant prosecutorial decision-maker, the Acting U.S. Attorney, has explained on the record that this prosecution was not brought for vindictive or discriminatory reasons,” McGuire writes in a court filing. He adds that any public statements by senior Trump administration officials about Abrego Garcia reflect public safety concerns that are “plainly consistent with a legitimate motivation to prosecute him.”
What is the main motion to suppress evidence about?
Another motion from Abrego Garcia asks the judge to suppress evidence in the case. It claims the 2022 traffic stop that ultimately led to the smuggling charges was illegal, so evidence from that stop should not be used at trial.
In support, court filings say the state trooper who pulled him over stated that the speed limit was 65 mph (105 kph) when it was actually 70 mph (113 kph). The trooper accused him of driving at 75 mph (120 kph), but there is no record that the trooper used a radar gun or pacing to gauge the speed. Abrego Garcia said he was driving at 70 mph, correctly noting the speed limit.
Attorneys for the government argue that the trooper made an honest mistake. The speed limit decreases to 65 mph about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) farther down the interstate. The attorneys also note that Abrego Garcia was driving in the left lane “consistent with an individual traveling in excess of the posted speed limit.” And the trooper, they said, had “no reason or motivation to manufacture a traffic violation against him.”
Is he being deported?
Abrego Garcia currently can’t be deported to El Salvador thanks to the 2019 settlement that found he had a “well founded fear” of danger there. However, the Trump administration has said he cannot stay in the U.S. Over the past couple of months government officials have said they would deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia.
The administration’s deportation agreements with so-called third countries have been contested in court by advocacy groups, which have noted that some immigrants are being sent to countries with long histories of human rights violations. But in June, a divided Supreme Court allowed the swift removal of immigrants to countries other than their homelands and with minimal notice.
Abrego Garcia sued the Trump administration in a Maryland court over his earlier deportation, and the judge in that case has temporarily barred his removal. If the judge decides to lift that order, government attorneys have said they are ready to deport him right away.
Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia has applied for asylum in the U.S. in immigration court.
A federal judge in Maryland on Monday sought assurances that the government will not deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia before she has lifted an injunction barring his removal from the U.S.
GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A federal judge in Maryland on Monday sought assurances that the government will not deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia before she has lifted an injunction barring his removal from the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement filed a notice late last week of their plan to deport him to the West African nation of Liberia as early as Friday. It’s the latest in a series of African countries the agency has designated as possible destinations for the Salvadoran national.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador, where he faces a “well-founded fear” of violence from a gang that targeted his family. Earlier this year, his mistaken deportation to El Salvador, where he was held in a notoriously brutal prison despite having no criminal record, galvanized opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June.
During a status conference on Monday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis questioned why the government does not simply deport Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica — a country he has said he is willing to go to because the government has promised he would welcomed as a legal immigrant and not re-deported to El Salvador.
“Any insight you can shed on why we’re continuing this hearing when you could deport him to a third country tomorrow?” Xinis asked government attorneys. She noted that both the government and Abrego Garcia were “about to burn significant resources” in fighting over whether he can legally be deported to Liberia.
Government attorneys, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew C. Ensign and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Guynn, didn’t immediately have an answer but suggested it could be part of an upcoming court filing.
In the meantime, the attorneys said ICE is preparing to interview Abrego Garcia after he filed an official notice expressing fear of deportation to Liberia. His attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told the judge they have received some confidential documents pertaining to assurances from the Liberian government about how Abrego Garcia would be treated there. However, they are not satisfied by what they have received. He hinted that the Liberian government has only agreed to take Abrego Garcia for a limited time.
The administration’s deportation agreements with so-called third countries have been contested in court by advocacy groups, who have argued that they violate due process rights and that immigrants are being sent to countries with long histories of human rights violations. But in June, a divided Supreme Court allowed the swift removal of immigrants to countries other than their homelands and with minimal notice.
When Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. in June, he was charged in Tennessee with human smuggling. He has pleaded not guilty and asked the judge to dismiss that case. A hearing on the motion to dismiss is set for next week, and Xinis noted the fact that the government seems ready to deport him just prior to that, saying his removal would be the end of the criminal case.
“It doesn’t pass the sniff test that there hasn’t been some coordination” Xinis said, noting that the hearing in the criminal case was “common knowledge.”
“If I don’t lift the injunction, you are abiding by it, and he’s not going to be removed? Is that right?” she asked the government attorneys. They agreed.
In a separate action in immigration court, Abrego Garcia has applied for asylum in the United States.
In a filing with a federal judge in Maryland, the Justice Department said Friday the Trump administration is seeking to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador, continues to fight in court against his potential deportation to a third country. CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador, continues to fight in court against his potential deportation to a third country. CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports.
Washington — The Justice Department said Friday that the Trump administration is seeking to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia and said the West African nation has agreed to accept him.
In a filing with a federal judge in Maryland, Justice Department lawyers said that immigration officials expect to formally notify Abrego Garcia later Friday that Liberia has been designated as the new country of removal. They said the Trump administration expects to be able to deport Abrego Garcia as soon as Oct. 31.
The administration has “received diplomatic assurances regarding the treatment of third-country individuals removed to Liberia from the United States and are making the final necessary arrangements for [Abrego Garcia’s] removal,” they wrote.
In the court filing, the Justice Department said that Abrego Garcia had identified more than 20 countries that he fears would persecute or torture him if he were removed there, and Liberia is not on the list.
“Liberia is a thriving democracy and one of the United States’s closest partners on the African continent,” they wrote.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, said the administration “has chosen yet another path that feels designed to inflict maximum hardship.”
“Their actions are punitive, cruel and unconstitutional,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “Unless Liberia guarantees that it will not re-deport Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, then sending him to Liberia is no less unlawful than sending him directly to El Salvador a second time.”
The Trump administration’s plan to remove Abrego Garcia to Liberia comes as the Maryland judge, Paula Xinis, is weighing whether to release the Salvadoran man from immigration custody while a challenge to the Department of Homeland Security’s ongoing efforts to deport him for a second time moves forward.
Abrego Garcia was removed to his home country of El Salvador in March and imprisoned there despite having been granted a legal status in 2019 that prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from removing him there because of possible persecution by local gangs. An immigration official with the Trump administration admitted that Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was an error, and Xinis ordered the Department of Homeland Security to facilitate his return to the U.S.
But immigration officials resisted doing so for months. Abrego Garcia was brought back to the U.S. in June, but only after a federal grand jury in Tennessee indicted him on two charges of human smuggling stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop.
Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty to the charges, and a judge in Tennessee said he should be released on bail ahead of the criminal trial, which is set to begin in January. But he remained in criminal confinement for several more weeks because his lawyers were concerned that the Trump administration would arrest him again upon his release and deport him.
Abrego Garcia was released from the Putnam County Jail in Tennessee in August and returned to Maryland, where he has lived since coming to the U.S. illegally in 2011. Days later, he was taken into custody by immigration authorities after being summoned for an interview at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore. The Trump administration notified Abrego Garcia’s lawyers he may be deported to Uganda, though Abrego Garcia expressed fear of persecution and torture, as well as a concern that the Ugandan government would send him back to El Salvador.
Since then, the Trump administration has searched for countries to accept Abrego Garcia and has sought to remove him to the African nations of Eswatini and Ghana. Neither of those two countries nor Uganda have agreed to take him. Abrego Garcia has said he would go to Costa Rica and designated it as his preferred country of removal. While Costa Rica has indicated it would provide him refugee status or residency, a Justice Department lawyer said during a hearing earlier this month there had not been discussions about deporting him there.
Sandoval-Moshenberg, his lawyer, reiterated on Friday that Costa Rica “remains a viable and lawful option.”
Xinis has forbidden the Trump administration from deporting Abrego Garcia while she considers his challenge to his ongoing detention by immigration officials and the efforts to remove him again.
Erez Reuveni, a fired Department of Justice lawyer who’s now blowing the whistle, says he witnessed a disregard of due process and for the rule of law at the DOJ.
Reuveni previously won commendations for his work and was so effective defending President Trump’s first-term immigration policy that he was promoted quickly in Mr. Trump’s second term. But he says he was put on leave and then fired after refusing to sign a brief in the mistaken deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Reuveni’s whistleblower disclosure helped highlight a growing concern in many courts across the country that the Justice Department is allegedly abusing the limits of the law.
“I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And my view of that oath is that I need to speak up and draw attention to what has happened to the department, what is happening to the rule of law,” Reuveni said. “I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now.”
From devoted DOJ lawyer to shock over orders
Reuveni says he knew he wanted to be involved in public service before he started law school. He started at the Department of Justice in 2010 and was there for 15 years defending the policies of several presidents, regardless of political party. Reuveni specialized in immigration law and, during Mr. Trump’s first term, he defended the controversial ban on travelers from predominantly Muslim countries, among many other cases.
“I defended everything they put on my plate. That was my job,” he said.
Erez Reuveni
60 Minutes
Shortly after Mr. Trump’s return to office, Reuveni was selected to be the acting deputy director of the Department of Justice’s immigration section, overseeing about a hundred attorneys and every case that arose in the federal district courts.
On March 14, the same day he found out about his promotion, Reuveni and others were called to a meeting with Emil Bove, number three at the Justice Department. Bove was also once Mr. Trump’s criminal defense attorney.
According to Reuveni, they were told the president would be invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a law not invoked since World War II, to allow rapid expulsion of citizens of enemy nations during a time of war. Without a declared war, the administration used it for a mass deportation of more than 100 Venezuelans the government said were terrorists.
The Venezuelans were to be denied the right to be heard by a judge and Reuveni said Bove expected a challenge.
“Bove emphasized, those planes need to take off, no matter what,” Reuveni said. “Then after a pause, he also told all in attendance, and if some court should issue an order preventing that, we may have to consider telling that court, ‘f*** you.’”
Reuveni says he was shocked.
“I felt like a bomb had gone off,” he said. “Here is the number three official using expletives to tell career attorneys that we might just have to consider disregarding federal court orders.”
“A real gut punch”
The next day, a Saturday, lawyers for some of the prisoners sued. Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia called a hearing and asked government lawyer Drew Ensign whether the planes were leaving that weekend.
Ensign told Boasberg he didn’t know whether the planes were leaving that weekend, even though Reuveni says he was at the same meeting where they were told the planes would be taking off over the weekend, no matter what. Reuveni said that moment in court was “stunning.”
“It is the highest, most egregious violation of a lawyer’s code of ethics to mislead a court with intent,” he said.
Ensign’s intent is unknown. It was during the hearing that planes took off.
The judge issued an order and, immediately, Reuveni emailed the agencies involved, writing “…the judge specifically ordered us to not remove anyone … and to return anyone in the air.”
“And then it really hit me. It’s like, we really did tell the court, screw you. We really did just tell the courts, we don’t care about your order. You can’t tell us what to do,” Reuveni said. “That was just a real gut punch.”
While the Department of Justice can disagree with and appeal orders, it is required to obey all court orders when they’re in effect, according to Peter Keisler, who ran the department as acting attorney general for a time in 2007 for then-President George W. Bush.
Peter Keisler
60 Minutes
Keisler said that detainees must be given the chance to contest the charges, even if those being deported are terrorists or gang members. He emphasized that there are lawful means to get terrorists out of the country.
“We have a saying in this country. It’s deeply embedded in who we are. Everybody deserves their day in court,” Keiseler said. “And all of us want to know that if the government acts against us, we will at least have the opportunity to go to a neutral decision-maker, present evidence and legal argument, and make sure that the government stays within its legal bounds.”
What happened in the Abrego Garcia case
When more facts were known about the weekend flights, it turned out a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported by mistake.
While people deported in error are normally returned, Reuveni said that in a phone call from a superior, he was ordered to argue that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 member and a terrorist to prevent his return.
“I respond up the chain of command, no way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is, that is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief,” Reuveni said.
Reuveni said what was important was not whether or not Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 or a terrorist, but whether or not he received due process.
“What’s to stop them if they decide they don’t like you anymore, to say you’re a criminal, you’re a member of MS-13, you’re a terrorist,” Reuveni said. “What’s to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie? And now that’s you gone and your liberties changed.”
Reuveni was fired after refusing to sign a brief that called Abrego Garcia a terrorist. In June, he filed a whistleblower complaint with the help of attorneys from the Government Accountability Project.
The state of the Justice Department
Reuveni is not alone in identifying a troubling pattern of behavior at the Department of Justice. Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor who heads a nonpartisan law journal, “Just Security,” said his team has analyzed hundreds of suits filed against the Trump administration. He published his team’s study online.
“We found over 35 cases in which the judges have specifically said, what the government is providing me is false information. It might be intentionally false information, including false sworn declarations time and again,” Goodman said.
In court records compiled by Goodman, Democratic and Republican appointed judges are critical of the Trump Justice Department’s work. One judge described it as “…highly misleading…” Another judge warned that “trust that had been earned over generations has been lost in weeks.”
“The one entity, or person, or institution that gets hurt the most is the Justice Department,” Goodman said.
Ryan Goodman
60 Minutes
60 Minutes requested interviews with Attorney General Pam Bondi, her former deputy Emil Bove, and Drew Ensign, the attorney who said he didn’t know when the planes were taking off, according to the court transcript. All declined 60 Minutes’ requests.
Bove, who was nominated for a judgeship, was asked in June about Reuveni’s claims during a confirmation hearing. He said he’d never advised a Justice Department attorney to violate a court order. Bove said, in part, that Reuveni was in no position to tell his superiors what to do.
“There’s a suggestion that a line attorney, not even the head of the Office of Immigration Litigation, was in a position or considered himself to be, to bind the department’s leadership and other cabinet officials,” Bove said.
Bove was confirmed for the judgeship. And in a statement to 60 Minutes he wrote, “…Mr. Reuveni’s claims are a mix of falsehoods and wild distortions of reality …”
Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. He’s now charged with transporting illegal immigrants. He pleaded not guilty. A judge criticized the Justice Department’s “poor attempts” to connect Abrego Garcia to MS-13. He was not charged with terrorism.
The Venezuelans that were sent to El Salvador were later released to their home country. This spring, the Supreme Court agreed, unanimously, that everyone deported under the Alien Enemies Act is entitled to due process.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen joined WTOP to talk about the ongoing shutdown and Saturday’s “No Kings” protest in the D.C. area and nationwide.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen has taken a prominent position for the Democrats in the wake of the 2025 federal shutdown.
He’s expressed strong support for federal workers across the country who have been fired, furloughed or otherwise affected when President Donald Trump shut down the federal government on Oct. 1.
WTOP’s Ralph Fox spoke with Sen. Van Hollen about the ongoing shutdown, and Saturday’s “No Kings” protest. Read the full Q&A below.
Listen to the full interview below or read the transcript. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Md. Sen. Chris Van Hollen joined WTOP’s Ralph Fox to discuss the shutdown and the No Kings protest.
Ralph Fox:
Let’s start with the shutdown. There have been whispers this could go on until Thanksgiving if there isn’t a substantial change. What are your thoughts?
Chris Van Hollen:
Well, I certainly hope not. We would like to end the shutdown today.
I’ve now voted seven times on a plan that would reopen the government without giving Donald Trump a blank check, and also in a way that prevents this huge health care crisis that is upon us.
We need to diffuse this ticking time bomb on America’s health care, and what we’d like to do is sit down and negotiate with President Donald Trump. He’s refused to do that.
I’m glad he’s doing negotiations in the Middle East, but he’s not negotiating here at home to reopen the government.
As you know, the House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republicans have been on, I think, a five-week paid vacation right now. They are totally AWOL. So in order to move forward, we do need everybody to come to the table.
Ralph Fox:
As far as the “No Kings” protests going on today, the right is positioning them as a “Hate America” event. What’s your take there?
Chris Van Hollen:
Well, that would be news to the moms and dads and grandmothers and grandfathers and kids and people of all ages and walks of life who I’ve met this morning on the march, including thousands and thousands of Marylanders already.
Millions of people around the country are saying yes to our democracy, and yes to our rights, but no to kings, no to a lawless president who has been focused on stripping away people’s rights — whether their rights to due process, whether their rights to free speech, whether their rights to a fair justice system.
So these protests represent the very best of American democracy, and when Speaker Johnson and Republicans can’t win the argument, they decide to engage in that kind of language labeling these democratic protests as hateful.
But I will just tell you that we saw a great American portrait all morning. Today, people standing up for the country they love.
Ralph Fox:
Do you think that protests like this will start to move some of the elected lawmakers in Congress?
Chris Van Hollen:
I hope so, yes. Because ultimately, especially for Republicans in Congress who’ve been a rubber stamp for Donald Trump.
The question is, are they more afraid of a Donald Trump tweet against them, or are they more worried about what their constituents think? And what we’re seeing is across the board, whether you’re Republican, a Democrat or anything else, people do not like this march toward taking their rights away.
And they certainly don’t like a government that seems to be focused on helping Donald Trump’s billionaire buddies at the expense of everybody else in America.
So this is an important day for American patriots. I mean, we fought a revolution to to make sure that we weren’t bowing down to kings, and that’s what today is all about. Peaceful protests across the country, and across Maryland, to stand up for our democracy and our Constitution.
Ralph Fox:
To go back to the shutdown, do you have an idea of what it’s going to take to get these federal employees moving once again and people back to work?
Chris Van Hollen:
Well, all it takes is a vote in the House and the Senate to get this moving and reopen the government. And we need to do so without giving Donald Trump a blank check.
Remember, Donald Trump has been shutting down parts of the government since day one. I mean, he brought in Elon Musk with his chainsaw. They illegally fired lots of federal employees. Now they’re holding federal employees hostage again to their agenda.
So what is required now is for the good of the country. The President needs to sit down and negotiate. I mean, he said his top priority was going to be to bring down prices and costs on Day One, he’s done everything else. He’s attacked our democracy. He has attacked our rights. But prices keep going up, and we are about to experience this huge spike in health care costs that we’re trying to address. And you know, Donald Trump says he cares about health care, but he’s nowhere to be found when it comes to sitting down to resolve this. We could do it today.
Ralph Fox:
I have one last question for you. I know it’s been a key issue with you. What’s the latest we know about Kilmar Abrego Garcia?
Chris Van Hollen:
Here’s an example of an individual who was literally disappeared off the streets of Maryland, denied his due process, and sent to a gulag in El Salvador.
The Trump administration said they would never let him set foot on American soil, even though their lawyers admitted that he’d been wrongfully deported.
By the way, the people who admitted that in the Justice Department, they got fired, which tells you that this is an administration that punishes people for telling the truth.
But right now, he’s back in the American court system, and he is working to protect his rights. As a federal court judge said the other day, the administration continues to abuse its power.
In this case, the federal judge said there was some ample evidence to show that the Trump administration was engaged in a political prosecution. So at least now Abrego Garcia is in the American court system and not locked up in a gulag in El Salvador.
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Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia say the Constitution demands his habeas corpus lawsuit must go on, and that he should be placed on home detention during the government shutdown.
Lawyers for Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia say the Constitution demands his habeas corpus lawsuit, challenging his current detention and potential deportation, must go on during the U.S. government shutdown — and, that he should be placed on home detention.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice filed a motion Wednesday requesting a stay in all aspects of the case, saying government attorneys “are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including ’emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.’”
However, in a motion filed late Thursday, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued the government failed to mention the habeas corpus law “expressly instructs that in the event of a lapse of appropriations, this Court will continue to ‘hear and dispose of pending cases.’”
As of Friday morning, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis had not issued an order on whether the scheduled Oct. 6 evidentiary hearing will go on.
With the status of the case uncertain, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers also note the government doesn’t have the right to detain him indefinitely.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers suggest Xinis impose the same conditions a Tennessee judge earlier ordered when releasing him before a trial for human smuggling — third-party custody, electronic monitoring, home detention, and regular reporting to Pretrial Services.
“If this Court orders Petitioner’s release from immigration custody, he would remain under these strict supervisions requirements, ensuring both his appearance at future proceedings and addressing any alleged public safety concerns, however misplaced those may be,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers wrote.
A U.S. immigration judge in Baltimore denied a bid for asylum on Wednesday, rejecting an application to reopen Abrego Garcia’s 2019 asylum case. He has 30 days to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
Outside of court, officials with President Donald Trump’s administration have repeatedly referred to Abrego Garcia as a member of the MS-13 gang, among other things, despite the fact he has not been convicted of any crimes.
Lawyers for the government have yet to respond to Abrego Garcia’s filing that the case should move forward, and that he should be on home detention in the interim.
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported from the U.S. to his native El Salvador, has been moved from a Virginia detention center to a facility in Pennsylvania.
FILE – Kilmar Abrego Garcia joins supporters in a protest rally outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Aug. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File)(AP/Stephanie Scarbrough)
FILE – Kilmar Abrego Garcia joins supporters in a protest rally outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Aug. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File)(AP/Stephanie Scarbrough)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported from the United States to his native El Salvador and whose case became a flashpoint over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, has been moved from a Virginia detention center to a facility in Pennsylvania.
Court records show Immigration and Customs Enforcement notified Abrego Garcia’s lawyers Friday that he was transferred to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Phillipsburg. It said the location would make it easier for them to access him.
However his attorneys raised concerns about conditions at Moshannon, saying there have been recent reports of “assaults, inadequate medical care, and insufficient food,” according to a federal court filing.
The Trump administration has claimed that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation that he denies and for which he was not charged.
The administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. in June, but only to face human smuggling charges. His lawyers have called the case preposterous and vindictive.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was transferred to a Pennsylvania detention center on Friday, his attorneys said in a status update, explaining to a federal judge handling his human smuggling case in Tennessee why a motion wasn’t promptly filed.
Abrego Garcia, the 30-year-old native of El Salvador who was mistakenly deported to his home country in March, was previously held at the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement notified Abrego Garcia’s legal counsel that he was transferred to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, on Friday morning, the court document filed on the same day said.
An ICE official told Abrego Garcia’s lawyers that the transfer will “allow Mr. Abrego-Garcia’s legal team greater access to him,” the filing stated. In response, his attorneys said, “It is not yet clear whether that is true.”
CBS News has reached out to the Department of Justice for comments.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued that travel to Moshannon is far more difficult for members of the defense team based in Nashville, and not easier for those in New York.
“Conditions at Moshannon are also deeply concerning,” his attorneys said, citing a detainee who died by hanging in August, reports of assaults, inadequate medical care and insufficient food.
Abrego Garcia filed a status report on Sept. 19, detailing how his detention at the Farmville Detention Center “placed substantial burdens on the defense’s ability to meet” with him, his counsel told the judge. Then on Sept. 22, the court instructed Abrego Garcia’s attorney to file an appropriate motion and set an expedited briefing schedule.
“We are submitting this notice to explain to the Court why a motion regarding difficulties meeting with Mr. Abrego at Farmville is not being promptly filed,” his attorneys said Friday in the update to Judge Waverly Crenshaw, Jr. “We will update the Court once there is more visibility into Mr. Abrego’s access to counsel and ability to prepare for trial at Moshannon.”
Before being returned to the U.S. in June to face the federal human smuggling charges, the Maryland father was held in a notorious Salvadoran prison for months following his deportation.
Abrego Garcia faces one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and one count of unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens. The indictment claims that Abrego Garcia and his co-conspirators “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands” of migrants who were not legally authorized to live or work in the U.S., and alleges that many of those people were members of the gang MS-13 and associates — a claim Abrego Garcia’s family has denied.
Prosecutors said Abrego Garcia was pulled over in November 2022 by Tennessee Highway Patrol for speeding. According to the indictment, Abrego Garcia had at least eight people in the car with him when he was stopped. He said that they had been performing construction work at a site in St. Louis, Missouri.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) speaks with Iowa state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, who is running for Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, at the Polk County Democrats Steak Fry in Des Moines on Saturday. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Iowa congressional candidates took time Saturday at the Polk County Democrats’ Steak Fry to condemn political violence in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing in Utah.
Van Hollen, gave a keynote address at event, an annual Iowa fundraiser that featured speeches from Democratic candidates for Iowa’s U.S. Senate race, as well as from the 3rd and 4th congressional district races. He spoke about Kirk’s death, saying the shooting is a reminder of “how fragile our democracy can feel,” while criticizing Trump’s response to the issue.
On Wednesday, Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot while answering a question at an event at Utah Valley University. The suspected gunman was identified and taken into custody Friday.
Politicians and leaders mourned Kirk’s death and called for a change to prevent future politically motivated violence.
“The answer cannot be more violence,” Van Hollen said. “The answer cannot be vengeance. And sadly, the president is using this moment not to unite America against political violence, but to engage in finger pointing.
“But we will not be silenced. We will speak out for what we believe vigorously, courageously and peacefully,” he said.
Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said it has been a “really hard week” in light of Kirk’s death, and that Democrats, and all Americans, need to take steps to ensure these threats are eliminated.
“We don’t have to look very far to see other examples of violence that has occurred because of political leanings,” Hart said, in part referring to the fatal shooting of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman in June. “And none of us find that to be acceptable, because it simply isn’t.
“We live in a country that was founded on the principle that we could stand up in a place like this and express our feelings, our thoughts, our attitudes, our beliefs and our political leanings, and not get shot because we have an opinion or a thought that’s different than somebody else’s,” she said.
In Iowa, there has been an outpouring of sympathy for Kirk’s family and calls to stop political violence. Speaking with reporters, Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate called for an end to political violence.
In recent days, there has been some criticism from Republicans and others of Iowans, including some teachers, who have made controversial social media posts about Kirk’s death.
Democratic Senate candidate Jackie Norris, the school board president for the Des Moines Public Schools, said political violence was unacceptable, and that teachers — alongside most people — should be more cognizant of what they are publicly posting on social media. However, Norris added, “we have to respect that people have different views,” including teachers.
“It is important that we tone down the rhetoric, but we also have to respect that (teachers) have strong feelings too,” Norris said. “It’s a balance.”
Van Hollen calls Democrats ‘spineless’ for not backing Mamdani
Van Hollen also told Iowans at the event that winning in 2026 will mean Democrats must be outspokenly in support of Democratic candidates running in 2025 races — including New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
The Maryland Democrat said Iowa would play an important role in the 2026 midterms — but that supporting Democrats in 2025 races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, as well as for New York City mayor, will help build “momentum” for 2026.
Van Hollen criticized New York Democrats for not supporting Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who won the Democratic mayoral primary. He said many Democrats representing New York in the U.S. House and Senate have “stayed on the sidelines” as President Donald Trump and others have mobilized to defeat the Democratic candidate.
“That kind of spineless politics is what people are sick of,” Van Hollen said. “They need to get behind him and get behind him now.”
Van Hollen criticized other aspects of the Democratic Party, saying the Biden administration was “feckless” in holding the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accountable to U.S. and international law. But he largely focused his remarks on Trump and Republicans in control of Congress.
In addition to talking about Medicaid cuts and criticizing Trump’s foreign policy decisions, Van Hollen said the Trump administration was violating people’s constitutional rights by pursuing mass deportations. Van Hollen gained a significant national platform earlier in 2025 for his work involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador erroneously and held in prison there before being returned to the U.S. He is currently being held in Virginia by immigration authorities.
Van Hollen was one of the major advocates for returning Abrego Garcia to this country and allowing his case to go through the U.S. court system. At Saturday’s event, he said he was advised not to pursue the issue, as immigration is not a winning topic for Democrats, but said he continued to fight for Abrego Garcia’s due process rights because “our democracy cannot survive on silence or equivocation.”
“And lo and behold, Americans across the political spectrum do believe in the red, white and blue essential right to due process in the United States of America,” he said. “They do believe in the principle that no one in America — I mean, no one — should be disappeared by the state without having a chance before a court of law. “And Americans understand this is not about one man,” Van Hollen said. “It’s about all of us. Because when you strip away the rights from one person, you threaten the rights … of all of us.”
Abrego Garcia has been returned to the U.S., though the Trump administration has said it intends to deport him again, potentially to the country of Eswatini, previously known as Swaziland.
Van Hollen said he would “never, ever apologize for standing up for anybody’s constitutional rights,” and said Democrats need to do more to speak out on issues they believe are important, even if polls or pundits say the topics are not politically advantageous. This will be especially important in states like Iowa, he said.
“We can and we will win here again, if — if — we speak to our core values, if we show people what we will stand up for and we will fight for,” Van Hollen said. “That’s why it’s great to be here to flip steaks and flip seats.”
– This story originally appeared in Iowa Capital Dispatch, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, spoke to state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, who is running for Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District in 2026 at the Polk County Democrats Steak Fry in Des Moines Sep. 13, 2025. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, and Iowa congressional candidates took time Saturday at the Polk County Democrats’ Steak Fry to condemn political violence in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing in Utah.
The Polk County Democrats Steak Fry, an annual fundraiser, featured speeches from Democratic candidates for Iowa’s U.S. Senate race, as well as from the 3rd and 4th congressional district races. Van Hollen, who gave a keynote address at the event, spoke about Kirk’s death, saying the shooting is a reminder of “how fragile our democracy can feel,” while criticizing Trump’s response to the issue.
On Wednesday, Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot while answering a question at an event at Utah Valley University. The suspected gunman was identified and taken into custody Friday. Politicians and leaders mourned Kirk’s death and called for a change to prevent future politically motivated violence.
“The answer cannot be more violence,” Van Hollen said. “The answer cannot be vengeance. And sadly, the president is using this moment not to unite America against political violence, but to engage in finger pointing. But we will not be silenced. We will speak out for what we believe vigorously, courageously and peacefully.”
Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said it has been a “really hard week” in light of Kirk’s death, and that Democrats, and all Americans, need to take steps to ensure these threats are eliminated.
“We don’t have to look very far to see other examples of violence that has occurred because of political leanings,” Hart said, in part referring to the fatal shooting of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman in June. “And none of us find that to be acceptable, because it simply isn’t. We live in a country that was founded on the principle that we could stand up in a place like this and express our feelings, our thoughts, our attitudes, our beliefs and our political leanings, and not get shot because we have an opinion or a thought that’s different than somebody else’s.”
In Iowa, there has been an outpouring of sympathy for Kirk’s family and calls to stop political violence. Speaking with reporters, Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate called for an end to political violence.
In recent days, there has been some criticism from Republicans and others of Iowans, including some teachers, who have made controversial social media posts about Kirk’s death.
Democratic Senate candidate Jackie Norris, the school board president for the Des Moines Public Schools, said political violence was unacceptable, and that teachers — alongside most people — should be more cognizant of what their are publicly posting on social media. However, Norris added, “we have to respect that people have different views,” including teachers.
“It is important that we tone down the rhetoric, but we also have to respect that (teachers) have strong feelings too,” Norris said. “It’s a balance.”
Van Hollen calls Democrats ‘spineless’ for not backing Mamdani
Van Hollen also told Iowans at the event winning in 2026 elections will mean Democrats must be outspokenly in support of Democratic candidates running in 2025 races — including New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
The Maryland Democrat said Iowa would play an important role in the 2026 midterms — but that supporting Democrats in 2025 races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, as well as for New York City mayor, will help build “momentum” for 2026.
Van Hollen criticized New York Democrats for not supporting Mamdani, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He said many Democrats representing New York in the U.S. House and Senate have “stayed on the sidelines” as President Donald Trump and others have mobilized to defeat the Democratic candidate.
“That kind of spineless politics is what people are sick of,” Van Hollen said. “They need to get behind him and get behind him now.”
Van Hollen criticized other aspects of the Democratic Party, saying the Biden administration was “feckless” in holding the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accountable to U.S. and international law. But he largely focused his remarks on Trump and Republicans in control of Congress.
In addition to talking about Medicaid cuts and criticizing Trump’s foreign policy decisions, Van Hollen said the Trump administration was violating people’s constitutional rights by pursuing mass deportations. The Maryland Democrat gained a significant national platform earlier in 2025 for his work involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador erroneously and held in the country’s megaprison.
Van Hollen was one of the major advocates for returning Abrego Garcia to the country and allowing his case to go through the U.S. court system. At the Saturday event, Van Hollen told Iowans he was advised not to pursue the issue as immigration was not a winning topic for Democrats — but he said he continued to fight for Abrego Garcia’s due process rights because “our democracy cannot survive on silence or equivocation.”
“And lo and behold, Americans across the political spectrum do believe in the red, white and blue essential right to due process in the United States of America,” he said. “They do believe in the principle that no one in America — I mean, no one — should be disappeared by the state without having a chance before a court of law. And Americans understand this is not about one man. It’s about all of us. Because when you strip away the rights from one person, you threaten the rights of all, of all of us.”
Abrego Garcia has been returned to the U.S., though the Trump administration has stated they intend to deport him again, potentially to the country of Eswatini.
Van Hollen said he would “never, ever apologize for standing up for anybody’s constitutional rights,” and said Democrats need to do more to speak out on issues they believe are important, even if polls or pundits say the topics are not politically advantageous. This will be especially important in states like Iowa, he said.
“We can and we will win here again, if — if — we speak to our core values, if we show people what we will stand up for and we will fight for,” Van Hollen said. “That’s why it’s great to be here to flip steaks and flip seats.”
