Judge orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia released from criminal custody

One of the Trump administration’s highest-profile deportation targets, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, must be released from criminal custody in Tennessee and returned to Maryland and cannot be immediately redetained by immigration authorities, a pair of federal judges ruled Wednesday.

The rulings are victories for Abrego, a Salvadoran man who entered the U.S. illegally and has lived in Maryland for about a decade. But they may be short-lived: Immigration enforcement officials signaled that he’s likely to be re-detained when he arrives in Maryland.

Earlier this year, Abrego was illegally deported to his home country despite an immigration court order barring him from being sent there. Then, after months of resisting court orders to return Abrego to the U.S., the administration brought him back to face newly unveiled charges of immigrant smuggling in Tennessee. Meanwhile, Trump officials suggested at times they would try to quickly deport him again.

The decisions from U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. in Tennessee and U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland — issued in tandem on Wednesday — are a climactic moment in Abrego’s four-month saga, which includes his abrupt deportation to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March and a Supreme Court order confirming that his expulsion from the U.S. was illegal.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the rulings.

Now, Abrego is likely to face a new round of deportation proceedings. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that despite the court orders, Abrego “will never walk America’s streets again.”

"The fact this unhinged judge is trying to tell ICE they can't arrest someone who is subject to immigration arrest under federal law is insane,” said the spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin.

Crenshaw, an Obama appointee, upheld a magistrate judge’s conclusion that Abrego should not be detained pending trial and must be released on bail. The magistrate will set Abrego’s release conditions.

Crenshaw also said prosecutors had made a sufficient showing that Abrego’s alleged smuggling activity likely involved “a minor victim.” That is enough to entitle the government to seek pretrial detention, but Crenshaw concluded that detention wasn’t appropriate because — with proper release conditions — Abrego is unlikely to flee or pose a danger to the community.

Crenshaw said prosecutors’ claims that Abrego might flee because he could fear being picked up again by Immigration and Customs Enforcement amounted to “pure speculation.”

“It is not difficult to see why one might seek to avoid ICE after experiencing what Abrego did in recent months,” the judge wrote, pointing to the Supreme Court’s description of Abrego’s saga.

“Still, the irony of the Government making this argument when it (albeit a different department in the Executive Branch) created these circumstances is not lost on this Court.”

Nearly simultaneously with Crenshaw’s ruling, Xinis ordered the government to bring Abrego back to Maryland and provide 72 hours advance notice of any attempt to deport him again. Xinis, also an Obama appointee, said the “modest” order was necessary to fully restore Abrego to the position he was in before the Trump administration deported him in March as a result of what they described at the time as an administrative error.

“The requested relief is necessary not only to fulfill this Court’s prior order, but also to provide the kind of ‘effective relief’ to which a wrongfully removed alien is entitled upon return,” Xinis wrote.

Xinis did not flatly rule out Abrego being taken back into immigration custody at some juncture, but she said she would not permit him to be subject to a rapid-fire deportation that doesn’t allow his attorneys to try to block it.

Xinis also expressed doubt that lawyers and an ICE official who testified in the litigation were aware of the details of Abrego’s case. She dismissed as “patently incredible” claims by DOJ attorneys that no work had been done to figure out where Abrego could be deported given the 2019 immigration court order forbidding his deportation to El Salvador because he was likely to face a risk of violence there. That order remains in force.

Crenshaw concluded that when Abrego was pulled over by Tennessee Highway Patrol in 2022 while driving an SUV carrying nine Latino men he was “not fully truthful.” But the judge said Abrego didn’t try to flee and was generally cooperative with the officers.

Crenshaw also said the government’s case that Abrego posed a danger to the community was “a far cry” from what would be necessary to mandate him being locked up pending trial and that accepting prosecutors’ claim that he’s an MS-13 gang member “would border on fanciful.”

The judge also expressed skepticism about the accounts of some of the witnesses who are cooperating with prosecutors. Their stories “evolved throughout the interview process,” Crenshaw wrote.