A federal judge in Maryland has ordered the immediate release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from immigration detention, ruling that his re-detention lacks lawful authority. The Department of Homeland Security has criticized the decision and signaled plans to keep fighting the case, while Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national facing human smuggling charges, denies any gang ties as deportation efforts continue.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the immediate release of 30-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, finding that there was no lawful basis for his continued detention.
According to court records cited by the Associated Press and other outlets, Xinis ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement must free Abrego Garcia while his legal challenge to his deportation proceeds. She wrote that since his return from what she described as wrongful detention in El Salvador, he had been "re-detained, again without lawful authority," and granted his petition for immediate release from ICE custody.
The judge directed federal authorities to notify Abrego Garcia of her order and to carry it out without delay. In her ruling, she concluded that there was no valid final removal order authorizing his detention and that judicial intervention was therefore required.
Abrego Garcia's legal saga began earlier this year, when he was mistakenly deported from the United States to a high‑security prison in El Salvador, despite court protections that were supposed to prevent his removal. Multiple news reports say the Trump administration had portrayed him as linked to the MS‑13 gang, an allegation his lawyers dispute and that they say rests on flawed evidence.
He was later returned to the United States in June to face federal human smuggling charges in Tennessee. According to Reuters and other outlets, prosecutors accuse him of conspiring to transport migrants, but he has pleaded not guilty and denies any involvement in smuggling or gang activity. A Tennessee judge allowed him to be released from criminal custody under conditions that let him live in Maryland with his family while awaiting trial.
After that release, immigration authorities detained him again and transferred him to an ICE facility in Pennsylvania, even as his criminal case remained pending. Xinis's ruling focused on that renewed immigration detention, concluding that ICE could not hold him without a lawful removal order.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national with an American wife and child, has lived in Maryland for years after entering the United States illegally as a teenager, according to the Associated Press. His trial on human smuggling charges is scheduled for January in federal court in Tennessee.
The Trump administration has explored sending him to a third country rather than back to El Salvador. Reuters has reported that officials have considered countries including Liberia, while Costa Rica has offered him refugee status.
In a statement reported by the Daily Wire, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin criticized the ruling, calling it "naked judicial activism by an Obama appointed judge" and asserting that the order "lacks any valid legal basis" while vowing that the government would "continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts." Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, did not respond publicly to the criticism; her opinion instead focused on what she described as the absence of legal authority for Abrego Garcia's detention.
Abrego Garcia remains under court supervision and still faces the Tennessee criminal case, but Thursday's decision frees him from immigration lockup as the high‑profile dispute over his deportation and alleged gang links moves forward.
