Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released from detention on Friday and headed back to his home state of Maryland, the latest move in a months-long saga that has become a symbol of President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Abrego Garcia was detained in March, mistakenly deported to El Salvador, held for months in a notorious prison where he alleges he was tortured, and eventually returned to the U.S. in June — only to face criminal charges in Tennessee. The Trump administration has accused him of gang membership and smuggling, allegations he and his family have staunchly denied.
A Nashville-based federal magistrate judge ordered Abrego Garcia to be released from jail two months ago while he awaits a criminal trial set to begin in January. That order had been delayed at the request of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, who feared that Immigration and Customs Enforcement could immediately detain him and try to deport him again.
The latest delay to Abrego Garcia’s release from jail ran out on Friday and Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes entered an order for his release. His lawyers confirmed he was free Friday afternoon.
But it’s unclear if or when Abrego Garcia will be detained by ICE yet again.
What happens after Abrego Garcia is released?
Holmes was expected to set conditions for Abrego Garcia’s release when she issues her order allowing him to walk out of jail.
Then he planned to return to Maryland, where he and his family lived prior to his March detention by ICE. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in court papers this week that they hired a private security company with “experience providing court-approved pre-trial transportation and security services in criminal cases” to bring him to Maryland.
His attorneys have asked Holmes to give him 48 hours following his departure from jail to report to pre-trial services in Maryland. The Justice Department — which has opposed releasing Abrego Garcia — said this week it isn’t opposed to a 48-hour grace period, noting that Abrego Garcia is expected to wear an electronic monitoring device once he leaves custody.
Upon his release, immigration agents aren’t allowed to immediately take Abrego Garcia into custody in Tennessee, under a ruling last month by Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. When he gets back to Maryland, the government must put him back into the same ICE supervision program that he belonged to before he was detained, and they need to give him 72 hours’ notice if they plan to initiate deportation to a country other than El Salvador, said Xinis.
Can Abrego Garcia be deported again?
Xinis’ order does not prevent ICE from initiating immigration proceedings against Abrego Garcia once he returns to Maryland. She wrote last month that the government “may take whatever action is available to them under the law.”
But if he’s detained by ICE again, the government’s plans for where he’d be sent are unclear.
“There’s been no decision made, as he is not in ICE custody,” Thomas Giles, assistant director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, told Xinis last month.
Giles said ICE would take custody of Abrego Garcia “as soon as possible,” and would determine “based on bed space availability” where to hold him.
In June, Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn told Xinis the government would seek to deport Abrego Garcia to a “third country” — that is, a country other than El Salvador. He added that there were “no imminent plans” to remove him from the United States.
However, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called a June report on Abrego Garcia’s possible deportation “fake news,” writing on X: “He will face the full force of the American justice system – including serving time in American prison for the crimes he’s committed.”
There are legal barriers to deporting Abrego Garcia to his home country of El Salvador — which he left more than a decade ago before entering the U.S. illegally at the age of 16.
In 2019, a judge barred the government from sending him to El Salvador, on the grounds that he feared persecution by local gangs. Despite that ruling, the Trump administration sent him to El Salvador in March — where he was held at the notorious CECOT mega-prison. A government attorney later admitted in court that the move was an “administrative error.”
That error set off the court saga surrounding Abrego Garcia. Xinis had ordered the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S., which the Supreme Court affirmed. But he remained in the Central American country for months as the Trump administration claimed it was up to the Salvadoran government to decide whether to return him, drawing frustration from Xinis, before he was finally flown back to face criminal charges in June.
What charges is Abrego Garcia facing?
Abrego Garcia was federally charged in June with conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.
The government alleges that Abrego Garcia was involved in a smuggling ring that transported undocumented immigrants from Texas to elsewhere in the U.S. Federal prosecutors also accused Abrego Garcia of belonging to the Salvadoran gang MS-13.
“As we have said since Day 1, this M13-gang member and human trafficker won’t be on … American streets again,” Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement earlier this week.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have strongly denied the government’s allegations, including claims that he belonged to MS-13. Earlier this week, his lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the charges, accusing the Trump administration of engaging in a “vindictive and selective prosecution.”
His attorneys wrote Tuesday that “the only possible explanation for the timing of the charges here is that the government chose to use this prosecution to punish Mr. Abrego for exercising his right to challenge the violations of due process that led to his unconstitutional deportation, incarceration, and torture in El Salvador.”
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