 "Kilmar Ábrego García freed from ICE facility after a federal court ordered his immediate release")
Kilmar Ábrego García was freed on Thursday from an immigration detention facility in Pennsylvania after a federal judge from Maryland ordered his 'immediate' release. According to The Associated Press, Ábrego was released before 5 pm (local time) and is planning to return to Maryland, where he has lived for so many years.
His lawyers confirmed the release and maintained that he does not yet know what will happen next, but is ready to continue fighting any additional deportation attempts on his client’s behalf. The Thursday ruling came after a habeas petition filed by Ábrego and his legal team, arguing that the federal government lacked authority to keep him in custody because no final deportation order had been issued.
The ruling is now being seen as a significant legal win for Ábrego, whose previous wrongful deportation to a notorious prison in El Salvador garnered outrage over the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
In response to the Thursday ruling, the Department of Homeland Security said it condemned the judge’s decision and announced plans to appeal, labelling the ruling as “naked judicial activism”.
Why it matters
It is pertinent to note that the case of Ábrego, a Salvadorian national who was a construction worker in Maryland, has become a proxy for the partisan struggle over Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration policy and mass deportation agenda. The Trump administration officials have been waging a relentless public relations campaign against Ábrego, repeatedly referring to him as a member of the MS-13 gang, along with a host of other things.
However, the man has not been convicted of any of the crimes he has been accused of. Ábrego has said that, while imprisoned in El Salvador, he endured beatings, sleep deprivation and psychological torture. In the Thursday order, US district judge Paula Xinis stated: “Since Ábrego García’s wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been redetained, again without lawful authority.”
Xinis went on to indicate that the lack of a valid removal order means the government cannot legally deport Ábrego from the US. Earlier this month, federal prosecutors asked the Maryland judge overseeing Ábrego’s immigration case to lift the restriction on deporting him to Liberia. They said Liberia had provided assurances that he would not face persecution or torture there.
Quick Reads
View AllIn March, Ábrego was deported to an El Salvador mega-prison. His mistaken deportation to the prison in March set off a prominent legal fight over his return – emblematic of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies. Government lawyers eventually acknowledged that his removal resulted from a procedural mistake.
Multiple federal judges and a unanimous Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return after determining his arrest was “illegal”. In June, the Maryland man was brought back to the US to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, where he entered a not guilty plea. Since then, the Trump administration has sought to deport him to several nations, including Ghana, Liberia, and Uganda.
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