Federal judge blocks government from detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia after release

Kilmar Abrego Garcia will not be detained by immigration authorities, according to his attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, after a federal judge blocked the government from re-detaining him right before he was scheduled to appear before immigration authorities in Baltimore.

“Shortly after midnight, we filed an application for temporary restraining order with Judge Xinis, and at 7:30 a.m. she granted the temporary restraining order prohibiting Kilmar Abrego Garcia from being re-arrested at this check in today. As a result of that, I’m pleased to announce that Mr. Abrego Garcia will be walking back out those doors again later this morning,” said Sandoval-Moshenberg.

Xinis granted an emergency temporary restraining order request from Abrego Garcia’s attorneys because an immigration judge appeared to add a removal order to Abrego Garcia’s immigration record.

Abrego Garcia was released from immigration detention Thursday after Judge Xinis ordered his release on the grounds that the government could not hold him in immigration detention because he was never issued a removal order.

But that night, an immigration judge issued a rare decision saying that he had “corrected” an error in Abrego Garcia’s record and appeared to add a removal order.

Immigration judge Philip Taylor said in his order that Abrego Garcia’s order of removal was “was erroneously omitted” from a 2019 immigration hearing, according to documents obtained by ABC News.

“The order of removal to El Salvador, which should have preceded the order granting him withholding of removal to El Salvador, was erroneously omitted,” Taylor said.

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which he denies.

He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

After being released into the custody of his brother in Maryland pending trial, he was again detained by immigration authorities and held in a detention facility in Pennsylvania.

In her order on Thursday, Xinis said that “since Abrego Garcia’s wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been re-detained, again without lawful authority.

“The circumstances of Abrego Garcia’s detention since he was released from criminal custody cannot be squared with the ‘basic purpose’ of holding him to effectuate removal,” Xinis said.

Xinis, citing reporting from ABC News and others, said the government at the same time could have removed Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, his preferred country of removal.

“Respondents’ calculated effort to take Costa Rica ‘off the table’ backfired,” Xinis wrote. “Within 24 hours, Costa Rica, through Minister Zamora Cordero, communicated to multiple news sources that its offer to grant Abrego Garcia residence and refugee status is, and always has been, firm, unwavering, and unconditional.”

Xinis in August blocked the government from removing Abrego Garcia from the United States until the habeas case challenging his removal was resolved in court. The habeas petition was granted Thursday.

“The history of Abrego Garcia’s case is as well known as it is extraordinary,” Xinis wrote in her decision Thursday.