Judge Allows Abrego Garcia To Remain Free While She Considers Immigration Issues

A U.S. District Judge overseeing a lawsuit by Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia against the Trump administration allowed him to remain free from custody while she assesses whether the government can validly remove him from the country.

Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, based in Greenbelt outside of Washington, D.C., said that she was “growing … impatient” with the government’s attorneys, who are arguing that Abrego Garcia’s summary removal from the country to El Salvador on March 15—pursuant to President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—was justified.

As Arjun Singh reports for The Epoch Times, Abrego Garcia, 30, entered the United States illegally as a teenager.

He had been granted, in 2019, a “Withholding of Removal” order by an Immigration Court, which prevents an alien who is otherwise deportable from being removed from the country, due to the finding of a credible fear for his life.

Thereafter, he lived in Maryland for six years, during which time he married a U.S. citizen and fathered a U.S. citizen child.

The Trump administration removed Abrego Garcia in March, stating that he is an “MS-13 gang member with a history of violence,” which he and his lawyers denied.

Democrats and progressive groups criticized the removal of Abrego Garcia in spite of the 2019 court order.

The administration said the removal was an “administrative error.”

“Why should I give the respondents the benefit of the doubt?” Xinis said during a hearing in the case on Dec. 22.

Xinis had issued a writ of habeas corpus—a constitutional remedy to release someone from government custody—to Abrego Garcia on Dec. 11, which freed him from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, and then issued a restraining order to the agency to bar it from re-taking him into custody on other grounds.

On Dec. 22, Xinis denied the government’s request to rescind that order.

“This is an extremely irregular and extraordinary situation,” Xinis said during the hearing.

Abrego Garcia also faces criminal charges in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee for conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens and related smuggling offenses stemming from a 2022 traffic stop.

A federal grand jury indicted him on May 21, 2025, after which the Trump administration repatriated him from El Salvador, his native country, on June 6 to face those charges.

Any proceeding to remove him from the country would occur in a civil Immigration Court, created for the purpose of adjudicating removal cases, and would be subordinate to the ongoing criminal case in Tennessee. Xinis has prioritized resolving the civil habeas corpus case in Maryland before allowing Abrego Garcia’s re-detention for removal.

The Trump administration has been ramping up deportations of illegal immigrants, prioritizing those with a criminal record.

Critics of federal immigration enforcement have been protesting in support of Abrego Garcia. Outside the hearing on Dec. 22, which he attended, supporters cheered for him while a choir sang, accompanied by bullhorn and drum.

Abrego Garcia’s case, on interlocutory appeal, also reached the Supreme Court, which on April 10 ruled to grant in part and deny in part an application to vacate Xinis’s order, vacating the return deadline but requiring the government to facilitate his release from custody in El Salvador and process his case as if not improperly removed.