Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released from federal immigration detention in Pennsylvania following a ruling from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, according to his attorney’s office. He was freed Thursday just before 5 p.m. and returned to Maryland later that evening to be with his American wife and child, arriving under a coat to shield him from cameras and onlookers.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he is prepared to defend his client against any further deportation attempts. The judge’s ruling came after Abrego Garcia and his legal team filed a habeas petition, arguing that the federal government had no legal authority to continue detaining him without a final deportation order. Judge Xinis ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release him immediately, noting that he had been re-detained unlawfully following a prior wrongful deportation to El Salvador.
The Department of Homeland Security criticized the decision and indicated plans to appeal, calling it “naked judicial activism.” Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who has lived in Maryland for years and has an American wife and child, was previously ruled by an immigration judge in 2019 to be ineligible for deportation to El Salvador due to threats from gangs targeting his family. After mistakenly being deported there in March, his case became a high-profile example of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Following his return under court order, ICE had attempted to deport him to other countries, but the federal lawsuit claims the administration is using deportation procedures vindictively. Abrego Garcia is also seeking to reopen his immigration case to pursue asylum in the United States and is facing unrelated federal criminal charges in Tennessee for human smuggling, to which he has pleaded not guilty and filed a motion to dismiss, alleging the prosecution is retaliatory.