The Rev. Michael Vanacore leads a prayer before a rally ends Oct. 6, 2025, outside U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland,  before a hearing in support of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)

GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to produce evidence within 48 hours on its efforts to again deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, this time to the southern African country of Eswatini.

That evidence from the Trump administration is due by Wednesday to  Maryland District Court Judge Paula Xinis. She will consider an order to release Abrego Garcia as part of his habeas corpus petition, which challenges his detention at a U.S.immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. 

If the Trump administration is making no effort to remove Abrego Garcia, Xinis said the issue then becomes indefinite detainment of an individual, which runs against a Supreme Court ruling that found immigrants can’t be detained longer than six months if they are not in the process of being removed.

Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported to his home country and to a notorious mega-prison before returning him to the United States to face criminal charges, has thrown the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown into the spotlight. 

Xinis, nominated by former President Joe Biden, scheduled another hearing Friday, which will be about Abrego Garcia’s possible removal to Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. The African country has aided the Trump administration in accepting third-country removals.

Department of Justice attorney Jonathan D. Guynn during Monday’s hearing confirmed such a removal is planned at some point by the administration.

Xinis pressed DOJ attorneys on exactly what steps the federal government has taken to send Abrego Garcia to Eswatini.

Guynn said the federal government has not formally started a plan of removal, but said he could not confirm if removal plans were in motion. He argued that there are no imminent plans by the federal government to remove Abrego Garcia and the DOJ is trying to show that by keeping him in ICE custody.

“The government feels like it’s in the damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t, situation,” Guynn said. “The government has been trying to respond … about concerns that Mr. Abrego Garcia will be rapidly removed from the United States, notwithstanding his habeas case, and ongoing immigration proceedings, and so in an abundance of caution… the United States is not imminently planning to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia.” 

Previously the Trump administration planned to deport Abrego Garcia to either Uganda or Eswatini. 

DOJ attorneys also asked for a temporary stay in the habeas corpus petition because of the government shutdown. 

Xinis denied the stay. She pointed to the DOJ’s own shutdown contingency plan, which allows for litigation concerning habeas petitions to continue. 

Protests in support of Abrego Garcia

About an hour before Monday’s hearing, the immigrant advocacy group CASA led a rally in front of the courthouse to continue its show of support for Abrego Garcia.

About 100 people led chants shouting, “We are Kilmar!” “No More” and “When we fight, we win!” and held signs in support of Abrego Garcia and criticizing the Trump administration.

Religious leaders said prayers and a few other people spoke, such as Krystal Oriadha, who serves as vice chair of the Prince George’s County Council. Oriadha’s father was born in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S., where he met her mother in college.

“I understand the story of immigration, and it’s one that has been such a story of pride in my life because it’s filled of sacrifice, yes and struggles, but pride and love for your family and hard work,” she said. “It is what every immigrant stands for, not the propaganda that this administration is propping up calling hardworking, loving families criminals, demonizing them. So let’s be careful and mindful of the propaganda that they’re spilling today.”

Tennessee charges

The federal judge in Abrego Garcia’s criminal trial in Tennessee, in which he is accused of human smuggling of immigrants, on Friday granted Abrego Garcia an evidentiary hearing. It will determine if those charges from the Trump administration are an illegal retaliation after Abrego Garcia successfully brought a suit challenging his wrongful deportation to El Salvador. 

Separately, an immigration judge last week denied Abrego Garcia’s request to reopen his asylum case. 

Abrego Garcia first came to the U.S. without legal authorization as a teenager in 2011. He tried to open an asylum case in 2019, but was denied because he did not apply within his first year in the U.S., which is the legal deadline for such claims.

The Friday decision from that immigration judge ends one of the efforts for Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to keep him in the U.S., due to his protections from deportation to El Salvador. 

A separate immigration judge granted Abrego Garcia those protections from El Salvador in 2019, finding that Abrego Garcia would likely face violence if returned to his home country. 

At the time, the federal government didn’t search for a third country to remove Abrego Garcia. 

Six-month limit

Monday’s hearing focused on the time frame of Abrego Garcia’s detainment and whether it conflicted with a 2001 Supreme Court case, in which justices ruled immigrants who are not in the process of removal cannot be kept in ICE detention for more than six months. 

Xinis questioned the reason for Abrego Garcia’s detention since late August if the Trump administration had no evidence of its plans to remove the longtime Maryland man. 

Another DOJ attorney, Bridget K. O’Hickey, said the federal government has not formalized a removal plan for Abrego Garcia, adding that she didn’t know if there were any plans in the process. 

Xinis called a short break in the middle of Monday’s hearing to give the DOJ attorneys time to make any calls to get information if the Trump administration was removing him. 

DOJ attorney Ernesto H. Molina said he was unable to reach anyone, pointing to the possible furlough of federal workers.

“It just is remarkable to me that you’re saying you can’t find a soul who can give you, in this case, any additional information,” Xinis said. “That suggests there is none.” 

One of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers in the Maryland case, Simon Y. Sandoval-Moshenberg, argued that if the Trump administration wanted to remove Abrego Garcia, they would send him to Costa Rica, which has already agreed to accept Abrego Garicia as a refugee. 

Xinis asked why Abrego Garcia hasn’t been removed to Costa Rica. 

“We’ve received no communications, and I can’t even wrap my brain to think of a constitutionally permissible reason why they would be fighting over whether to send them across the Atlantic Ocean when they can, this afternoon, send him to Costa Rica,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

Xinis asked the DOJ attorneys if there has been any effort to remove Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, but Molina and O’Hickey said they have not been informed of those efforts.

Human smuggling charges

Attorneys for Abrego Garcia’s criminal case in Nashville said in court filings that the Trump administration was trying to force him to plead guilty to  human smuggling charges by promising to remove him to Costa Rica if he does so, and threatening to deport him to Uganda if he refuses. 

Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty and was ordered released by the federal judge in Tennessee to await his trial there in January on charges he took part in a long-running conspiracy to smuggle immigrants without legal status across the United States. 

In late August, after Abrego Garcia was released from U.S. Marshals Service custody in Tennessee, immigration officials informed him he had to appear in Baltimore before the ICE field office for a check-in appointment. During that appointment, Abrego Garcia was detained. 

Xinis has previously ordered the Trump administration cannot remove Abrego Garcia from the U.S. while his habeas petition continues, and that he must be kept within 200 miles of the courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland. Last month, the Trump administration transferred Abrego Garcia from a facility in Virginia to an ICE detention facility 189 miles away in Pennsylvania. 

William J. Ford contributed to this report. 

Dairy cows huddle at sunset on a farm in Manitowoc County. Advocates and farmers say an ICE raid that took 24 migrants into custody Sept. 25 poses a threat to the state’s dairy farms and the immigrant workers that keep the industry afloat. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

The morning of Sept. 25, federal agents and immigration authorities swept into Manitowoc to arrest people alleged to be in the country without proper documentation. Agents first went to a Walmart parking lot where dairy workers are known to meet up before driving to the farms where they work. The action then moved on to private residences, where migrants were arrested as they left the house. 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims the ICE raid in Manitowoc was aimed at dismantling an international sex and drug trafficking ring, but has so far provided little evidence to support that claim. Federal authorities initially said 21 migrants had been arrested in the raid, before later saying 24 had been picked up. 

On Tuesday, DHS released the names of six of the 24. Only one individual named in the release has been charged with a sex crime — Jose Hilario Moreno Portillo, who was charged in Manitowoc County court in May with the 2nd degree sexual assault of a child. However, Moreno Portillo has not yet been convicted and court records show he’s been in ICE custody since July. 

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on why Moreno Portillo was named as being arrested in the Manitowoc action when he was already in ICE custody. 

The five other named individuals have been convicted of identity theft, hit-and-run, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, possession of narcotic equipment, traffic offenses and a failure to appear charge. 

In Wisconsin, immigrants without documentation aren’t able to obtain driver’s licenses, which often causes them to wrack up several criminal traffic offenses when they’re pulled over and ticketed for driving without a license. 

With little proof that ICE actually broke up a ring of sex traffickers, immigration advocates and farm groups see the raid as a direct threat to the state’s dairy farms and the immigrant workers that keep the industry afloat. 

Farmers and immigrant advocates in Wisconsin have been watching ICE’s actions on dairy farms across the country closely. In March, ICE raided a dairy farm and petting zoo in New York. In April, a raid on a dairy farm in Vermont resulted in eight arrests. And in early June, ICE arrested 11 immigrants in a raid on a dairy farm in New Mexico. 

But so far, enforcement against undocumented people on dairy farms had been sporadic and far from the Midwest. In June, President Donald Trump announced and then retreated from guidance that ICE would not aggressively target farms and the hospitality industry. 

While last Thursday’s raid in Manitowoc didn’t take place on a dairy farm, most of the individuals arrested were dairy workers. Beyond that, they were dairy workers in the county with the highest concentration of dairy factory farms in the state. Manitowoc County and its northeast Wisconsin neighbors are the epicenter of the modern farming powerhouse that maintains Wisconsin’s status as “America’s Dairyland.” 

“It’s just sending an economic ripple effect across the dairy industry, which is Wisconsin’s rural economy,” says Luis Velasquez, statewide organizing director for immigrant advocacy group Voces de la Frontera. “And then also there’s the symbolic and political dimension to it as well. We are America’s Dairyland, and so this enforcement is not just an administrative matter, but it threatens the industry’s well being. Who are we going to be after all of this? Are we still going to be America’s Dairyland?”

Velasquez says the raid sent a “big anxiety wave” through immigrant communities across the state. 

“These views have just spiraled out of control in terms of the rumors that have been sent out across the community, rumors of ICE coming into their neighborhoods, to their homes, to their schools,” Velasquez says.  

“I have had serious conversations since the raid in Manitowoc of folks who are planning to leave after many years of being here,” he adds. “They just don’t feel like this is a humane lifestyle anymore. They’ve given many years of their lives, and many of them have children here.” 

Michael Slattery, a Manitowoc County farmer who grows grain and raises Holstein steers, points to data that shows 70% of the labor on Wisconsin’s dairy farms comes from immigrants and estimates that the dairy industry is the driver of 20% of Manitowoc County’s economy. 

Slattery says farmers can’t survive without that migrant labor because no one else is willing to do the work.

“Do you want to get up at 3 a.m. seven days a week to go out in the cold, the heat, to get kicked by cows when you’re putting the suction cups on, to be shat upon, pissed on, pushed around by 1,400 pound cows? People don’t want that,” he says. “I’ve tried to hire part time labor here, I cannot get people, they don’t want to do this sort of stuff.”

Simply expecting farm families to pick up the slack isn’t the answer, he adds.  “These dairy farms, they don’t have enough family members that can come out and replace immigrant labor, both documented and undocumented, that are leaving,” Slattery says. “They’re in a money-losing situation now.” 

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Losing the dairy labor force would have ripple effects across the economy in Wisconsin and the country. 

“What do they do in that situation? If your cows cannot be milked, in two, two and a half weeks they’ll go dry,” he says. “The cows get milk fever, get ill, that’s your cheap hamburger in the stores. They’re selling the cows at a loss, that’s what they’ll do. There’s less milk in the market, that will drive up prices for cheese, milk and butter.”

Danielle Endvick, executive director of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, says if Wisconsin’s immigrant workers leave the state — either from being arrested by ICE or leaving on their own to avoid arrest — farms could close and prices could increase. 

“Immigration raids and mass deportations can shrink rural economies, are terribly destabilizing for communities and can harm schools, churches, just the fabric of our rural communities too,” Endvick says. “Our rural spaces, our farmers can’t thrive if we’re treating a key workforce like they’re disposable. I think that immigrant workers are essential to Wisconsin dairy, and that when they are threatened, farmers in our rural communities are threatened too.”