A protester holds a photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia as demonstrators gather to protest against the deportation of immigrants to El Salvador outside the Permanent Mission of El Salvador to the United Nations on April 24, 2025 in New York City.  (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland on Friday approved the transfer of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from immigration detention in Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee, for a multi-day hearing in his criminal case brought by the Trump administration after an erroneous deportation to El Salvador. 

The Trump administration previously planned as soon as Friday to again deport Abrego Garcia, this time to the West African country of Liberia. Abrego Garcia has protections from deportation to his home country of El Salvador after an immigration judge in 2019 feared he would face violence if removed there. 

Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis will allow for the transfer for his multi-day hearing on Nov. 4 and 5, according to court documents. 

Xinis, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, is overseeing Abrego Garcia’s challenge to his detention, which is separate from the criminal case. His attorneys argue the Trump administration is keeping Abrego Garcia in detention to punish him, rather than seeking deportation. 

Abrego Garcia has agreed to be removed to Costa Rica, which has offered to accept him as a refugee. The Trump administration also has floated several other African countries as deportation destinations for Abrego Garcia: Ghana, Eswatini and Uganda.

Deportation, criminal charges

The Trump administration in March erroneously deported Abrego Garcia, a longtime Maryland resident, to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador — a move that thrust a spotlight on the realities of the president’s immigration crackdown. 

Facing mounting pressures from various courts that ordered Abrego Garcia’s return, the Trump administration brought him back in June to face criminal charges lodged against him by the Justice Department that stemmed from a traffic stop in 2022. 

Those charges, to which Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty, accuse him of smuggling migrants across the country. 

The federal judge overseeing Abrego Garcia’s criminal trial in Nashville, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, this week filed an order warning Trump administration officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, they could face sanctions if they continue to make inflammatory remarks about Abrego Garcia. 

Members of the Trump administration, including President Donald Trump, have without evidence repeatedly labeled Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 gang member. 

Tennessee hearing

The multi-day hearing for Abrego Garcia in Tennessee comes after Crenshaw earlier this month found there was a “likelihood” that the DOJ indictment against Abrego Garcia was vindictive. Obama also nominated Crenshaw.

Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland with his wife and their three children when he was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents earlier this year and notified that there had been a change in his status. Because of the deportation protections, Abrego Garcia was required to check in with ICE each year.

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

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Friday identified the West African nation of Liberia as the location for the removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, noting his deportation could come as soon as Oct. 31. 

In a Friday court filing in the District of Maryland, the Department of Justice argued that Liberia is a close partner with the United States and that the federal government has received assurances from Liberia that Abrego Garcia will not be harmed if he is deported there. They added that Abrego Garcia, who has a wife and family in Maryland, has not expressed fear of being removed to Liberia.

“Although Petitioner has identified more than twenty countries that he purports to fear would persecute or torture him if he were removed there, Liberia is not on that list,” according to the filing.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys in his Maryland case could not be immediately reached for comment.

The new filing comes shortly after attorneys for Abrego Garcia in a separate case in Tennessee this week requested to subpoena Trump DOJ official Todd Blanche in connection with Abrego Garcia’s claim that his criminal case by the Trump administration is vindictive. That hearing is set to start Nov. 4.

Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to those charges, which accuse him of the human trafficking of immigrants in an incident stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. 

Detention challenged

Abrego Garcia, whose wrongful deportation cast a spotlight on the president’s aggressive immigration crackdown, is challenging his detention on the grounds that the Trump administration is using his imprisonment as punishment rather than for the purpose of removal. 

Abrego Garcia has stated he is willing to be deported to Costa Rica, which has agreed to accept the longtime Maryland man as a refugee. 

Because Abrego Garcia has deportation protections from his home country of El Salvador, the Trump administration must find a third country that is willing to accept him and a country where Abrego Garcia believes he will not face harm or persecution. 

The Trump administration so far has floated sending Abrego Garcia to one of three nations in Africa —  Ghana, Eswatini and Uganda.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis found little evidence the Trump administration has made any effort to remove Abrego Garcia either to the southern African nation of Eswatini or Costa Rica. 

At that hearing, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys told Xinis they have not received an answer from the federal government as to why officials won’t remove Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica. 

Detained in Pennsylvania

Xinis is currently mulling whether or not to order the release of Abrego Garcia, who is detained at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Pennsylvania. 

Any indefinite stay would likely be unconstitutional, per a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that does not allow for immigrants to be detained longer than six months if the federal government is making no efforts to remove them.

In March, Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, where he detailed his experience of psychological and physical torture. 

Rallygoers hold a sign that reads “Free Kilmar” during a rally Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)

GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge in Maryland seemed inclined to order the release of  Kilmar Abrego Garcia from immigration detention after oral arguments in court Friday, a potentially major development in the high-profile case.

After a more than six-hour hearing, District Judge Paula Xinis said a witness provided by the Justice Department showed little evidence that the Trump administration made an effort to remove Abrego Garcia to the southern African nation of Eswatini, and knew nothing about Abrego Garcia agreeing to be removed to Costa Rica. 

The witness tapped by the Department of Justice was John Schultz, a deputy assistant director who oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal operations.

After hearing from him, Xinis said keeping Abrego Garcia detained indefinitely would likely be unconstitutional. She said she would issue an order soon.

Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant whose wrongful deportation from Maryland put a spotlight on the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, is currently detained in Pennsylvania. 

His attorneys have argued the Trump administration is using detention to punish Abrego Garcia because officials are not trying to remove him, even after Abrego Garcia agreed to be deported to Costa Rica.

‘Three strikes, you’re out’

Xinis expressed her frustration with Department of Justice attorneys for not providing a witness who would give clear answers on how immigration officials were handling the removal of Abrego Garcia. 

“We’re getting to the three strikes, you’re out,” Xinis said. 

Andrew J. Rossman, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, argued that if Immigration and Customs Enforcement is making no plans to immediately remove him, he should be released from detention. 

He also argued that since March, when the Trump administration erroneously deported Abrego Garcia to a mega-prison in El Salvador, to the present, Abrego Garcia has been “in continuous containment” way past the six-month limit set by the Supreme Court regarding the detention of immigrants.

“The real aim of the government… is punitive, which is just to keep him incarcerated,” Rossman said. “It’s an overtly political purpose.”

Rossman told Xinis that he has not received an answer from the federal government as to why they will not remove Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, after he agreed to that proposal in August.

Xinis asked DOJ attorney Drew Ensign why Abrego Garcia hasn’t been removed to Costa Rica.

Ensign said that it was not clear to the government until Friday that Abrego Garcia had agreed to be removed to Costa Rica, because Abrego Garcia had previously expressed fear of being sent there. 

Abrego Garcia changed his position after Costa Rica assured him he would be given refugee status.

“That is a new development that I will report back to people,” Ensign said.

Supreme Court ruling

A 2001 Supreme Court ruling does not allow for immigrants to be detained longer than six months if the federal government is making no efforts to remove them. 

After 90 days without efforts to deport an immigrant, a challenge can be made because detaining that person any longer than a maximum of 180 days, or six months, would likely be unconstitutional, the high court found in Zadvydas v. Davis. 

Earlier this week, Xinis seemed likely to order Abrego Garcia’s release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, where he has remained since late August. 

Xinis, who also ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego Garica to the United States after she found his removal to El Salvador unlawful, is overseeing his habeas corpus petition, which challenges his detention.

Protesters rally outside the courthouse

Ahead of the hearing, dozens of supporters from the immigrant advocacy group CASA gathered in front of the District Court for the District of Maryland, chanting, “Somos todos Kilmar,” or, “We are all Kilmar.” 

Rallygoers also chanted “What do we want? Justice!” “When do we want it? Now!” 

Some also held signs urging the Trump administration to free Abrego Garcia.

Two Maryland state legislators, Dels. Nicole Williams and Bernice Mireku-North, both Democrats, joined the rally.

Williams sponsored legislation during this year’s General Assembly session to prohibit local police from entering into certain agreements with ICE. On the last day of the legislative session in April, lawmakers passed a watered-down version of a bill that does not include the ban, the biggest loss for Maryland immigration advocates this year.

“We are going to be working on legislation with regards to masking by law enforcement officers,” Williams said. “We need to start treating everyone, I don’t care where you’re from, in a humane and decent way. And that’s what we’re going to be fighting for every single day until Kilmar is free and Kilmar comes home. So stop using Kilmar for your own political gain. Bring Kilmar home.”

White House involvement

Schultz, the DOJ witness, revealed that the White House had direct involvement in picking Uganda as a potential third country of removal for ICE’s deportation of Abrego Garcia. 

The move was unusual because the State Department typically coordinates third-country removals for the Department of Homeland Security.

Schultz said the Homeland Security Council, which operates within the White House, notified ICE of Uganda as a third country of removal. The Homeland Security Council works with the National Security Council of the White House. 

While Uganda is no longer a third country of removal for Abrego Garcia, ICE is trying to now remove him to Eswatini. 

Schultz said Eswatini has not agreed to take Abrego Garcia, but discussions, which he said started on Wednesday, are underway. 

“The discussions are continuing,” Schultz said. 

Schultz said he is not aware if ICE has not made any efforts to determine if Abrego Garcia would face persecution or be tortured or confined in Eswatini, or be removed a second time to El Salvador.  

Eswatini has previously agreed to accept third-country removals from the U.S. and the two countries have a memorandum of understanding, he added.

Ghana another potential destination

Schultz said that ICE has also identified the west African country of Ghana as a potential nation for Abrego Garica’s removal. Schultz said once a third country has agreed to accept Abrego Garica, he could be removed by ICE within 72 hours.

However, Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa, wrote on social media that the country will not accept Abrego Garcia. 

“This has been directly and unambiguously conveyed to US authorities,” he wrote. “In my interactions with US officials, I made clear that our understanding to accept a limited number of non-criminal West Africans, purely on the grounds of African solidarity and humanitarian principles would not be expanded.”

Schultz said that ICE “prematurely” sent a notice of removal to Abrego Garcia with Ghana as the designation.

The Costa Rica alternative

One of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, Sascha Rand, grilled Schultz about why DHS would not remove him to Costa Rica, despite Abrego Garcia agreeing to go.

Schultz said he was unaware of the letter from Costa Rica’s government saying it would accept Abrego Garcia.

Another attorney for Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said that the Trump administration offered to remove Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica in August if he were to plead guilty to criminal charges in a federal case in Tennessee. 

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys in his criminal case in Nashville said in court filings that the Trump administration is trying to get 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. 

Rand asked Schultz if anyone from DHS was in contact with Costa Rica.

Schultz said he was unaware if there were conversations between the federal government and Costa Rica about removing him there. 

Rossman said based on Schultz’s testimony, it was clear the Trump administration was “holding hostage passage to Costa Rica.”

“They aren’t presently intending to remove him,” he said. “They have spun the globe and picked various (African) countries… to fail on purpose.”

William J. Ford of Maryland Matters contributed to this report.

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. 

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, pictured at center, was released from jail in Putnam County, Tennessee, on August 22, 2025. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

WASHINGTON — Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who the Trump administration admitted to wrongly deporting in March, said over the weekend that the administration moved him from one U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Virginia to another in Pennsylvania, raising concerns over his access to legal counsel.

In a Saturday legal filing, attorneys representing Abrego Garcia in a criminal case in Tennessee said the federal government’s decision to move him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, has made it difficult to meet and “properly prepare for trial.”

His attorneys also raised concerns over the conditions at the facility, saying that a detainee died by suicide last month.

“There have been recent reports of assaults, inadequate medical care, and insufficient food, and the Department of Homeland Security abruptly terminated an internal investigation into allegations of excessive force and abuses by guards at the facility,” according to the filing. 

Last month, a judge in Maryland signed a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from transferring Abrego Garcia more than 200 miles from the federal courthouse in Greenbelt. The facility in Pennsylvania is 189 miles from the courthouse.

In the Maryland case, Abrego Garcia is challenging his removal from the U.S. and asking to remain in the country while he pursues his asylum case. 

Wrongful removal sparked conflict between branches

Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly removed to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, has become a flashpoint between the judicial branch and the administration as President Donald Trump pursues an immigration crackdown. 

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that the administration must facilitate  Abrego Garcia’s return, and immigration officials brought him back to the U.S. to face criminal charges lodged against him in June.

Shortly after his return, the Trump administration tried to remove him to a third country to comply with removal protections from his home country of El Salvador. The administration has continued efforts to remove Abrego Garcia to Uganda and Eswatini, though Costa Rica has also agreed to accept him as a refugee. 

The Tennessee criminal charges stem from a traffic stop in 2022 that included Abrego Garcia and several people. No charges were filed at the time.

The Department of Justice has alleged that Abrego Garcia took part in a long-running conspiracy to smuggle immigrants without legal status across the United States for money. He’s pleaded not guilty to those charges. 

Asylum denied in 2019

Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. without legal authorization in 2011 when he was 16. He applied for asylum in 2019, but because he did not apply for asylum within his first year in the U.S. – the legal deadline for such claims – authorities denied the application. 

Instead, an immigration judge granted him deportation protections, known as a withholding of removal, because the judge found it likely that Abrego Garcia would face gang violence if he were returned to El Salvador. 

Federal immigration officials at the time didn’t object to the judge’s withholding of removal order and didn’t find a third country to deport Abrego Garcia.

Earlier this year, Abrego Garcia was picking his son up when immigration officials detained him and said his status changed. Days later, he was deported along with hundreds of men to the mega-prison in El Salvador where he later said he experienced psychological and physical torture.