Lawyers for Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia and prosecutors seeking to expel him from the country faced a deadline Tuesday to provide a federal judge with a timeline for hearings on the widely watched case.
District Judge Paula Xinis ruled Monday that the government cannot deport Abrego Garcia for a second time until she holds a hearing on a lawsuit challenging his deportation. Xinis stressed that the government was “absolutely forbidden at this juncture” from removing Abrego Garcia from the United States.
It has been a whirlwind few days for Abrego Garcia, who has spent more than five months in detention, including time at a notorious prison in his native El Salvador. On Friday, he was released from criminal custody in Tennessee and returned to his home in the Washington suburb of Beltsville, Maryland.
On Monday he was detained again after reporting to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore. ICE officials claimed they wanted Abrego Garcia to check in for an interview, but then they detained him within a minute of his arrival, his lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said.
Hours later, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed the federal lawsuit seeking to ensure their client was not shipped out of the country, possibly to Uganda, without a hearing. That suit put the case before Xinis.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation blocked: What to know
Trump administration determined to expel Abrego Garcia
The government’s attorney, Drew Ensign, said deportation was not imminent. But the Trump administration has remained resolute in its quest to do so.
“President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator to terrorize American citizens any longer,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a social media post.
Abrego Garcia has repeatedly denied those claims.
Abrego Garcia’s detention is the latest chapter in a case that started in March when he was stopped near his home in Maryland and a short time later was wrongfully whisked away to a Salvadoran mega-prison. He was returned to the U.S. in June but remained in custody until last week. The case has fueled outrage over the Trump administration’s hardline deportation policies.
Where is Abrego Garcia being held? Where could he be deported?
Sandoval-Moshenberg said his client is being held in a detention facilitiy in Virginia. Xinis suggested during the hearing that, if Abrego Garcia is deported, federal law may require that he be sent to his country of choice.
But Abrego Garcia’s lawyers say U.S. officials have offered to deport him to Costa Rica if he pleads guilty to transporting migrants living illegally in the United States. When he declined to enter a guilty plea, the U.S. government warned he could be deported to Uganda.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers say they have entered plea discussions with the government to avoid deportation to Uganda, which they say would be “far more dangerous” than Costa Rica.
“They’re holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “They’re weaponizing the immigration system in a way that’s completely unconstitutional.”
‘An acceptably less bad option’
Before his check-in with ICE, Abrego Garcia notified the government in writing that Costa Rica would be an acceptable country for the United States to send him after he received assurances from Costa Rica that he would be given refugee status there and would not be deported back to El Salvador, Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
“For him to be removed to Costa Rica is not justice,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said, “it is an acceptably less bad option.”
Last week Uganda became at least the fourth African nation reaching an agreement with the United States to accept an unspecified number of deported migrants who would not include people with criminal records or unaccompanied minors.
Contributing: Evan Mealins, Eduardo Cuevas
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation fate headed back to court
