Kilmar Abrego Garcia leaves ICE detention after judge ordered release UPDATED 39M AGO
Washington — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was wrongfully deported to his own country earlier this year, returned to his Maryland home on Thursday night after a judge ordered his immediate release.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, informed CBS News on Thursday that he was formally released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Pennsylvania.
He was seen arriving at his Maryland home a few hours later. Abrego Garcia’s legal team informed CBS News that he was directed to report to an ICE field office in Baltimore at 8 a.m. on Friday.
He was placed in ICE custody after being released from pretrial incarceration during the summer after receiving similar orders, and there are worries that he would be arrested again on Friday for other reasons.
Overnight, his lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who has been presiding over his case, to issue an emergency order blocking immigration officials from re-detaining Abrego Garcia after an immigration judge “unlawfully issued a purported removal order” Thursday night, they said in a filing.
Xinis granted that request on Friday morning, prohibiting the Trump administration from taking Abrego Garcia into custody once again. She ordered his lawyers and the Justice Department to submit additional filings.
“If, as Abrego Garcia suspects, [immigration officials] will take him into custody this morning, then his liberty will be restricted once again. It is beyond dispute that unlawful detention visits irreparable harm,” she wrote in a brief order.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said during a rally outside the ICE field office Friday that because of the judge’s latest order, Abrego Garcia would remain free.
The overnight court action came after Xinis granted Abrego Garcia’s habeas corpus petition seeking release from custody Thursday morning. It’s a significant victory for Abrego Garcia, whose immigration case became a major flashpoint in President Trump’s mass-deportation campaign when he was removed to El Salvador earlier this year. An earlier order had prohibited the U.S. from removing him to his native country because of possible persecution by local gangs.
Xinis, in her order, found that there was no final order of removal from the government to deport Abrego Garcia from the United States, despite the Trump administration’s repeated attempts to remove him.
“Because respondents have no statutory authority to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country absent a removal order, his removal cannot be considered reasonably foreseeable, imminent, or consistent with due process,” Xinis wrote in Thursday’s order.