The Trump administration has attempted for months to deport Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, and domestic abuser in the country illegally, only to be incessantly blocked at every turn by liberal federal judges.
On Monday, a Democrat-appointed federal judge in Maryland asserted that the administration was “absolutely forbidden” from removing Garcia from the country, at least for the time being, according to The Hill.
The judge was insistent that Garcia, who was previously barred from being deported to his home nation of El Salvador by a different judge, must be allowed to challenge in federal court any effort to deport him to a third country.
Deported, returned, detained, and charged
The saga began in March for Abrego Garcia when an admitted “administrative error” resulted in him being deported to El Salvador and imprisoned in that nation’s maximum security prison for gang members and terrorists, despite a 2019 court order that found the illegal alien was deportable to anywhere other than his nation of origin.
Per another court order, Garcia was later returned to the U.S. in June, only to be arrested and detained in Tennessee on federal human trafficking charges, but a federal judge in that state ordered on Friday that he must be released and allowed to return to his family in Maryland, albeit with instructions to check in with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore on Monday.
At that check-in, he was detained yet again by ICE and faced the prospect of deportation to the African nation of Uganda, which recently agreed to accept U.S. deportees from other nations, prompting his attorneys to file for an emergency court hearing.
“Absolutely forbidden” to deport Garcia right now
At the hearing on Monday, according to The Hill, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee, told the Justice Department’s attorney, “Your clients are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States. That is the understanding that we have?”
The judge took issue with the news that Garcia would be deported to Uganda after he rejected an offered deal to plead guilty to the human trafficking charges, serve a reduced sentence, and be deported to Costa Rica, which guaranteed him citizenship and safety — a guarantee that Uganda declined to extend.
“You can’t condition the relinquishing of a constitutional right in that regard,” Xinis said of the reported deal, and added of the non-guarantee from Uganda, “The silence is taken certainly in contrast to what’s been provided by the country of Costa Rica. The contrast is significant.”
In the meantime, the judge ordered that Garcia remain at an ICE facility in Virginia pending future hearings on his eventual removal from the country and where he would ultimately be deported to.
Costa Rica “an acceptably less bad option” than Uganda
USA Today reported that one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, decried to reporters the alleged plea deal offered by the DOJ and said, “They’re holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick,” and asserted, “They’re weaponizing the immigration system in a way that’s completely unconstitutional.”
He added that for his client to be “removed to Costa Rica is not justice,” though he acknowledged that “it is an acceptably less bad option.”
The DOJ attorney insisted during the hearing that Garcia’s deportation was “not imminent,” but the administration has nonetheless been adamant that the illegal alien and alleged criminal will eventually be removed from the U.S.
“Today, ICE law enforcement arrested Kilmar Abrego Garcia and are processing him for deportation,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in an X post. “President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator to terrorize American citizens any longer.”
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Author: Ben Marquis
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