GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order early Friday preventing the Trump administration from detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia again, just hours after ordering his release from immigration custody in the latest twist in a case that has transformed him into a national symbol of contentious enforcement policies.
The emergency order by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis came after Abrego Garcia’s attorneys rushed back to court seeking protection when they learned authorities might attempt to re-arrest him. The ruling represents another setback for the government’s prolonged efforts to deport a man whose wrongful removal to El Salvador and subsequent return has spotlighted questions about due process in immigration enforcement, CNN reported.
Xinis had ordered Abrego Garcia released Thursday evening from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, approximately 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, finding the government was unlawfully holding him partly because no removal order from an immigration judge existed during that detention period. Immigration and Customs Enforcement freed him just before the 5 p.m. deadline the judge imposed, allowing him to return home to Maryland hours later.
“Yesterday’s order from Judge Xinis and now the temporary restraining order this morning represent a victory of law over power,” his attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said Friday, while emphasizing the legal battle was far from finished.
Speaking through a translator after his release, Abrego Garcia expressed gratitude and defiance. “I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” he said, PBS.com reported, citing the Associated Press. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”
He urged others facing similar struggles to continue fighting. After addressing supporters, he entered an ICE field office for a check-in, escorted by advocates. When Sandoval-Moshenberg emerged to announce his client would walk out free again, the crowd assembled outside erupted in relief.
Check-ins represent how ICE monitors individuals released while pursuing asylum or other immigration cases through a backlogged court system. The appointments were once routine, but many people have been detained at their check-ins since Trump’s second term began.
The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized Xinis’s orders and vowed to appeal, characterizing the rulings as “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.
“This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
Sandoval-Moshenberg countered that the judge made clear the government cannot detain someone indefinitely without legal authority. “His client has endured more than anyone should ever have to,” he said in a statement.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen married to an American with whom he has a child, has resided in Maryland for years after immigrating illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. An immigration judge granted him protection in 2019 from deportation to his home country, where he faces danger from a gang that targeted his family.
The 2019 settlement determined he had a “well founded fear” of danger in El Salvador if returned there. While allowed to live and work in the United States under ICE supervision, he was not granted residency status.
Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported despite the protection order and held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record. Facing mounting public pressure and a court mandate, the Trump administration brought him back to the United States in June—but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked a federal judge to dismiss them.
Since he cannot be removed to El Salvador, ICE has attempted to deport him to a series of African countries. Abrego Garcia filed a lawsuit claiming the Trump administration is illegally weaponizing the removal process to punish him for the public embarrassment his wrongful deportation caused.
In her Thursday order releasing him, Xinis wrote that federal authorities “did not just stonewall” the court. “They affirmatively misled the tribunal.” The judge referenced the government’s successive proposals to remove Abrego Garcia to multiple African countries without securing their agreement, as well as false claims that Costa Rica had withdrawn an acceptance offer.
Xinis also rejected the government’s argument that she lacked jurisdiction to intervene regarding a final removal order, determining no final order had been filed.
The human smuggling charges against Abrego Garcia stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia, who was transporting nine passengers. Officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling but ultimately allowed Abrego Garcia to continue driving with only a warning.
Prosecutors allege he accepted money to transport people within the United States who were in the country illegally. A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the Trump administration must work to bring Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador.
That testimony has fueled defense arguments that the prosecution is vindictive. Abrego Garcia has asked the Tennessee federal court to dismiss the case on those grounds. A judge in that case has ordered an evidentiary hearing after previously finding some evidence the charges “may be vindictive,” noting several statements by Trump administration officials that “raise cause for concern,” including remarks by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that seemed to suggest the Justice Department charged Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful deportation case.
The temporary restraining order issued Friday morning provides Abrego Garcia immediate protection while broader legal questions about his detention and deportation proceed through the courts. How long that protection lasts depends on whether higher courts uphold Xinis’s rulings or grant the government’s promised appeals.
The case has drawn intense scrutiny from immigration advocates who view Abrego Garcia’s ordeal as emblematic of what they characterize as punitive enforcement divorced from legal authority. His wrongful deportation despite a valid protection order, subsequent detention without legal basis, alleged government misrepresentations to the court, and criminal charges filed only after he successfully challenged his removal collectively paint a picture of retaliation, his supporters argue.
The government maintains it is simply enforcing immigration law and that Abrego Garcia’s illegal entry and alleged human smuggling justify his detention and prosecution. Officials assert that judicial intervention undermines lawful immigration enforcement and prevents ICE from executing its congressionally mandated duties.
For Abrego Garcia himself, Friday’s court victory provided temporary respite after months of detention following his traumatic experience in El Salvador’s prison system. Whether he will ultimately remain free, secure asylum, or face deportation to a third country remains uncertain as multiple legal proceedings unfold simultaneously in Maryland and Tennessee courts.
The broader implications extend beyond one man’s case. The judicial findings of unlawful detention and government misrepresentations could influence how courts scrutinize ICE’s authority to hold immigrants indefinitely and evaluate official claims about deportation options. Other immigrants facing similar circumstances may cite Abrego Garcia’s case as precedent for challenging their own detention or removal proceedings.
As the legal battles continue, Abrego Garcia’s status as a symbol of immigration enforcement controversies ensures his case will remain in the spotlight, offering fodder for both critics of Trump’s policies and defenders of aggressive enforcement. The outcome may help define the boundaries of executive power in immigration matters and the role of courts in checking that authority.
PBS/CNN/AP
