A federal judge in the US on Friday issued an order prohibiting immigration officials from detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who has become the face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
US District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot re-detain Garcia, who was released from detention after a court order on Thursday.
“Officials cannot re-detain him until the court conducts a hearing on the motion for the temporary restraining order,” Judge Xinis, who also ordered his immediate release on Thursday, said.
According to The Associated Press, Judge Xinis wrote that Abrego Garcia is likely to succeed on the merits of any further request for relief from ICE detention.
“For the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice, the Court’s narrowly crafted remedy cannot be so quickly and easily upended without further briefing and consideration,” she wrote.
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Abrego Garcia thanks supporters
Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia appeared for the appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office on Friday. Earlier, he also stopped at a news conference outside the building, escorted by a group of supporters.
“I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator.
“I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family,” he said
The 30-year-old urged people to keep fighting.
“I stand here today with my head held high and I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me,” Abrego Garcia said.
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“Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws and I believe that this injustice will come to an end.”
Fight not over yet, says lawyer
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenber, reminded his supporters that the legal fight was not over.
“Yesterday’s order from Judge Xinis and now the temporary restraining order this morning represent a victory of law over power,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
Abrego Garcia’s fight to stay in US
Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
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His family and supporters put up an unprecedented legal fight to bring him back to the US. Despite the best efforts of the Department of Justice, the Trump administration was forced to bring him back to the US.
Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the US illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a US citizen.
In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, where he faces danger from a gang that targeted his family. While he was allowed to live and work in the US under ICE supervision, he was not given residency status.
Earlier this year, he was deported and held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record. Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, Trump’s Republican administration brought him back in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
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Human smuggling charges
Prosecutors alleged he accepted money to transport within the United States people who were in the country illegally. The charges 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. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling.
However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning. A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the US Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked a federal judge there to dismiss them.
