Kilmar Abrego Garcia speaks to a crowd holding a prayer vigil and rally on his behalf outside the ICE building in Baltimore, Maryland, on Aug. 25, 2025. Lydia Walther Rodriguez with CASA interprets for him. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)

WASHINGTON — The wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia is no longer in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after a federal judge ordered his release earlier Thursday, according to his attorneys and an immigrant rights group that has advocated his case.

CASA, the immigrant rights group that has supported Abrego Garcia and his family since he was erroneously deported to a brutal Salvadoran prison, told States Newsroom he was released from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania before a 5 p.m. Eastern deadline set by the judge. He has remained there since September. 

 However, it remained unclear Thursday night if the Department of Homeland Security will follow the judicial order, and the White House press secretary said the Department of Justice would swiftly appeal the decision.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to States Newsroom the “order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”

She did not respond to a follow-up question if ICE would follow the order from U.S. District Court of Maryland Judge Paula Xinis to release Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant and longtime Maryland resident who cast a spotlight on the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown after he was wrongly deported.

Abrego Garcia was imprisoned in a brutal prison in El Salvador and returned to the United States to face criminal charges in Tennessee. After he was ordered released from U.S. marshals custody by a federal judge, ICE detained him again at an appointment at the Baltimore, Maryland, ICE field office.

‘Without lawful authority’

Xinis, in a ruling highly critical of the administration’s actions in the case, found that since Abrego Garcia was brought back to the United States, he was detained “again without lawful authority,” because the Trump administration has not made an effort to remove him to a third country, due to his deportation protections from his home country of El Salvador. 

The order comes after Abrego Garcia challenged his ICE detention in a habeas corpus petition. Xinis was mulling a Supreme Court precedent that deemed immigrants cannot be held longer than six months in detention if the federal government is not actively making efforts to remove them.

“Separately, Respondents’ conduct over the past months belie that his detention has been for the basic purpose of effectuating removal, lending further support that Abrego Garcia should be held no longer,” Xinis wrote in her opinion.

Costa Rica has agreed to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee, but in court, Department of Justice lawyers did not give Xinis a clear explanation of why the Trump administration would not remove him to Costa Rica. Instead, the Trump administration has tried to deport Abrego Garcia to several countries in Africa. 

Prolonged detention found

In her opinion, Xinis said that Abrego Garcia’s release is required under the Supreme Court’s precedent, referred to as the Zadvydas v. Davis case, because his nearly four-month detention at an ICE facility in Pennsylvania had been prolonged. 

“Respondents’ persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” Xinis said.

She also noted witness testimony from several ICE officials who were unable to provide any information on efforts to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country where he would not face torture, persecution or deportation to El Salvador.  

“They simply refused to prepare and produce a witness with knowledge to testify in any meaningful way,” she said of the Department of Justice.

While the Trump administration has floated removing Abrego Garcia to Eswatini, Ghana, Liberia and Uganda, the Department of Justice is moving forward with criminal charges lodged against Abrego Garcia that stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. 

The judge in that Nashville case is trying to determine if the human smuggling of immigrants charges against Abrego Garcia – to which he has pleaded not guilty – are vindictive. 

Missing order of removal

Another issue Xinis pointed out was the Department of Justice’s inability to produce a final order of removal for Abrego Garica.  

“No such order of removal exists for Abrego Garcia,” she said. “When Abrego Garcia was first wrongly expelled to El Salvador, the Court struggled to understand the legal authority for even seizing him in the first place.”

She also cited the ICE officials’ testimony, which did answer whether a removal order existed. 

“Respondents twice sponsored the testimony of ICE officials whose job it is to effectuate removal orders, and who candidly admitted to having never seen one for Abrego Garcia,” she said. “Respondents have never produced an order of removal despite Abrego Garcia hinging much of his jurisdictional and legal arguments on its non-existence.”

Attorneys for Abrego Garcia have argued if there is no order of removal, there is no basis for his ICE detention.

Abrego Garcia is not challenging his deportation, and has agreed to be removed to Costa Rica, but has remained in ICE detention since August.

William J. Ford contributed to this report.