US judge orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release from ICE custody

A judge has ordered the immediate release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported in March and brought back to the US to face criminal charges, from immigration custody.

US District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland said since returning to the US, Mr Abrego Garcia was re-detained “again without lawful authority”.

The order means Mr Abrego Garcia will at least temporarily be allowed to return to his home in Maryland.

His case became a focal point in the administration’s crackdown on immigration after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation.

Judge Xinis wrote in her ruling that the government did not have a removal order, which blocks it from deporting Mr Abrego Garcia “at this juncture”.

Mr Abrego Garcia, who is married to a US citizen and has been living in Maryland for years, illegally came to the US from El Salvador when he was a teenager.

The Trump administration has alleged Mr Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 criminal organisation, which he has denied.

In 2019, he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities.

At the time, the judge granted him protection from deportation on the grounds that he could face persecution by a gang in his home country.

He was returned to the US in June, where he was arrested and taken to Tennessee to face human smuggling charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Mr Abrego Garcia was released from jail in Tennessee and into the custody of his brother in Maryland.

He was told to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) there, where he was taken into custody.

Judge Xinis on Thursday said he must now follow the conditions of his release from jail in Tennessee, and cannot be removed from the country.

The judge had initially temporarily barred the government from removing him to a third country while she heard his challenge to the detention.

The government has told Judge Xinis it was considering removing him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and later Liberia.

Costa Rica offered to take Mr Abrego Garcia, the judge said, but the government did not accept its offer.

In her 31-page order on Thursday, the judge wrote immigration detention cannot be used for punishment or go on indefinitely.

She wrote that the first three African countries had never been “viable options”, while Costa Rica “had never wavered in its commitment to receive Abrego Garcia, just as Abrego Garcia never wavered in his commitment to resettle there”.

“Whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” she wrote.