Abrego Garcia Freed from ICE Custody

A federal judge in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Thursday ordered the release of Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia from federal immigration custody in Pennsylvania — a long-awaited update in an extraordinary case that has dominated international headlines and federal court dockets for nearly 10 months.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered Abrego Garcia released from the ICE Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, Pa., on the grounds that the Trump administration had not obtained the final notice of removal order that is needed to deport him to a third country, including a list of African nations they had previously identified for his removal.

The order Thursday rested on the court's determination that ICE had not obtained a final notice of removal needed to remove Abrego Garcia from the U.S. Without that removal order, Xinis said, Abrego Garcia could not remain detained in federal immigration custody.

Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign suggested in November that the immigration judge who ruled in 2019 that Abrego Garcia could not be removed back to his home country of El Salvador had "meant," or implied a final order of removal — a notion Xinis dismissed in her ruling.

Xinis used a separate memo opinion Thursday to tick through, in extemporaneous detail, the court’s unsuccessful, five-month effort to obtain information from the Trump administration about ICE’s plans to deport Abrego Garcia to the four African countries it had identified for his removal — Uganda, Ghana, Eswatini, and Liberia — and why Costa Rica, in their telling, was no longer an option.

Xinis had also pressed Trump officials on why they could not deport Abrego Garcia to the third county of Costa Rica, whose government had granted the necessary assurances that they would not detain him or refoul him back to his home country of El Salvador.

Trump officials previously told her in court that Costa Rica was "off the table," though they did not provide evidence.

Subsequent court filings appear to show that Costa Rica had not reneged on its agreement to accept Abrego Garcia into their country, casting renewed doubt on that claim.

The order from Xinis comes after lawyers for the Trump administration repeatedly asked Xinis to dissolve an emergency order she handed down in August, which required Abrego Garcia to remain in U.S. immigration custody, and within 200 miles of her court.

Xinis's order also ostensibly allows Abrego Garcia to remain in the U.S. with his brother, pending trial in the criminal case in Nashville.