Kilmar Abrego Garcia Released from Immigration Detention as Legal Battle Continues
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 30, was released from a Pennsylvania immigration detention facility following orders from US District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland. Within hours, he returned to Beltsville, Maryland, and was scheduled to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at its Baltimore field office on Friday.
Abrego Garcia, who entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his US citizen brother, lives in Maryland with his American wife and child. He had previously faced deportation to El Salvador in 2019 but was granted protection from deportation, though not residency.
Earlier this year, he was wrongly deported to El Salvador and detained. The Trump administration later returned him to the U.S. in June after an arrest warrant was issued on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. After being released there, he was detained again. Abrego Garcia has applied for asylum and pleaded not guilty to the Tennessee charges.
His lawyer argues that the government lacks the legal authority to detain him indefinitely. A 2019 settlement found that Abrego Garcia had a well-founded fear of danger if deported.
The White House has stated it will appeal the judge's decision, while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) criticized the ruling as "naked judicial activism."
