BALTIMORE — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who reunited with his family last week after 160 days apart following his mistaken deportation to El Salvador, was taken into ICE custody Monday after an immigration check-in, but a judge later ruled that he cannot be deported, for now.
The check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Baltimore was part of the conditions of his release Friday from federal custody.
While such meetings are usually routine and meant for case updates, Abrego's attorneys had expected he would be taken into ICE custody after the Trump administration over the weekend announced its intention to deport him to Uganda.
"There was no need to take him into ICE detention. ... The only reason they took him into detention was to punish him" for exercising his constitutional right to speak up and fight proceedings, said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego's attorneys.
Monday afternoon, Sandoval-Moshenberg said Abrego was being held at a detention center in Virginia.
Abrego was deported in March but returned to the United States on June 6, after he was indicted and charged with transporting within the United States people who were not legally in the country. He has denied the allegations.
What we know about Abrego Garcia's case
- Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March because of what officials described as an “administrative error.”
- In April, a judge ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego — spurring a legal back-and-forth that involved the Supreme Court.
- Abrego was returned to the United States on June 6 after an indictment in a federal court in Nashville, Tennessee. The indictment charged Abrego with transporting within the United States people who were not legally in the country.
- He was released from federal custody on parole Friday and had a tearful reunion with his family after months apart. Minutes after his release, immigration authorities notified Abrego that they intend to deport him to Uganda.
- Separately, the Trump administration offered him a plea deal that would ensure his eventual deportation to Costa Rica.
Abrego filed a new lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Maryland "seeking to ensure that he is not removed from the United States pending his immigration proceedings."
The lawsuit asked a federal judge to issue an order that Abrego not be allowed to be removed from the United States unless he is given proper due process to fight his potential deportation.
The suit challenges Abrego's deportation to Uganda or any other country unless and until he has had a fair trial, Sandoval-Moshenberg said. He later argued that deporting his client to any country without any credible assurances that he could stay there would be “just a very inconvenient layover to El Salvador.”
At a hearing Monday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered that Abrego must remain stay detained in the United States — temporarily blocking his deportation to Uganda — until she holds an evidentiary hearing.
Xinis said there are "several grounds" on which there may be jurisdiction for her to exercise relief — among them that Uganda has not agreed to offer Abrego protections, like being able to walk freely, being given refugee status and not being re-deported to El Salvador.
Before his ICE check-in appointment and detainment Monday morning, Abrego addressed reporters surrounded by family, supporters, faith leaders and his legal team, who were all calling for his freedom.
"My name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and I want you to remember this, remember that I am free and I was able to be reunited with my family," he said in Spanish before a translator repeated in English.
"This was a miracle. Thank you to God and thank you to the community," he added. "I want to thank each and every one of you who marched. Lift your voices, never stop praying and continue to fight in my name."
The government says Abrego was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, in violation of a 2019 court order. After much legal resistance, he was returned to the United States in June and hit with human smuggling charges out of Tennessee, which he pleaded not guilty to.
The Trump administration has repeatedly accused Abrego of being a member of the notorious MS-13 gang, which his attorneys have denied. His lawyers have said he illegally immigrated to the United States when he was 16 to join his brother in Maryland to escape gang violence in El Salvador.
The Trump administration offered Abrego a plea deal last week, his lawyers said in a court filing Saturday that was part of their efforts to get the charges in Tennessee dropped over what they consider "vindictive" and "selective" prosecution.
If he pleads guilty to the federal charges out of Tennessee and serves time, he can be deported to Costa Rica. The Costa Rican government said he would live as a free man there, according to the filing.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said Abrego would not accept the plea deal, as he "will not accept charges of which he's not guilty."
But Sandoval-Moshenberg said that if Abrego is deported to Costa Rica instead of Uganda, that would be "a perfectly reasonable option."
"Even if they were to name Spain as the country — unless they've got guarantees he can stay that country, all it is is really a way station on the way right back to El Salvador, where it's already been established that he can't go," Sandoval-Moshenberg said Monday on "Meet the Press NOW."
"And that's what we have from Costa Rica right now: assurances of refugee status, assurances that they will not re-deport him," Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
While the Abrego case has received a lot of attention, there have been others who have allegedly been deported erroneously, Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
He said he has gotten emails from more than a dozen other immigration lawyers saying the same thing happened to their clients.
“This whole business with third-country removals is really brand new; it’s just something that started,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
“We thought that Abrego Garcia was sort of a one-of-a-kind case,” he said. “But it turned out really to just be the tip of the spear.”
Gary Grumbach reported from Baltimore, Marlene Lenthang from Los Angeles and Rebecca Cohen from New York.
