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Kilmer Abrego Garcia was scheduled to check in with immigration officials Friday, about 14 hours after being released from custody on a judge’s order.
Abrego García became the focus of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year after he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison. El SalvadorHe was last detained in August during a similar investigation,
He is scheduled to attend at 1 a.m. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the field office baltimore,
The agency released him just before 5 p.m. Thursday in response to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Paula Zinis in Maryland, who wrote that federal authorities had taken him into custody after his return. United States of America Without any legal basis.
mistakenly deported and then returned
Abrego García is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the United States 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 is at risk from a gang that had targeted his family.
Although he was allowed to live and work in the US under ICE supervision, he was not granted 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 US in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human trafficking charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and has asked a federal judge there to dismiss them.
A lawsuit to stop deportation from the US
The 2019 agreement found that he had a “well-founded fear” of danger in El Salvador if he was deported there. So instead ICE is seeking to deport him to several African countries. Abrego García has filed a lawsuit claiming that the Trump administration is illegally using the removal process to punish him for the public embarrassment caused by his deportation.
In his order to release Abrego García, Zinis wrote that federal officials “did not merely obstruct” the court, “they positively misled the tribunal.” Zinis also rejected the government’s argument that he did not have jurisdiction to intervene on the final order removing Abrego García, as he found that no final order had been filed.
ICE freed Abrego Garcia from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday, just ahead of a deadline Axinis had given the government to provide an update on Abrego Garcia’s release.
A few hours later he returned home to Maryland.
immigration check-in
Check-in is the way ICE keeps track of certain people who are released by the government to pursue asylum or other immigration cases as they make their way through the pending court system. Appointments were once routine but since the beginning of the President’s term many have been detained upon their check-in donald trumpSecond term of.
Sandoval-Moschenberg said she is prepared to defend her client against further deportation attempts.
“The government still has a lot of tools in their toolbox, a lot of tricks up their sleeves,” Sandoval-Moschenberg said. He said he remains hopeful that the government will take action again to deport his client. “We’re going to fight to make sure there’s a fair trial.”
The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized Zinis’ order and vowed to appeal the ruling, calling it “naked judicial activism” handed down by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.
“This order has no valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this issue vigorously in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the department.
Sandoval-Moschenberg said the judge made it clear that the government cannot detain someone indefinitely without legal authority and that her client “has endured more than anyone.”
Abrego Garcia has also applied to the immigration court for asylum in the US.
charges in tennessee
Abrego García was charged with human trafficking and conspiracy to commit human trafficking after the U.S. government extradited him from El Salvador. Prosecutors alleged that he accepted money to smuggle people into the United States who were in the country illegally.
The charges stem from a traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee in 2022. Body camera footage shows a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer having a peaceful conversation with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car and the officers discussed among themselves the suspicion of smuggling. However, Abrego García was ultimately allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that it did not begin investigating the traffic stop until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the Trump administration should act to extradite Abrego Garcia.