Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia have asked a federal court in Maryland to compel the government to return him there once he leaves a Tennessee jail, a move aimed at blocking immigration officials from deporting him a second time.
Abrego Garcia, a Maryland construction worker, drew national attention to President Trump’s immigration agenda after authorities mistakenly sent him back to El Salvador in March. On 7 June he was flown to the United States and booked into a Tennessee jail on federal human-smuggling charges linked to a 2022 traffic stop.
Last week U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville ruled that Abrego Garcia is entitled to pre-trial release because prosecutors had not shown he is a flight risk or a public danger. Yet Holmes delayed setting him free, warning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could immediately remove him from the country. She also questioned her own power to order ICE to stand down, noting she could only direct local prosecutors to “use their best efforts” to secure the agency’s cooperation.
To solve the impasse, Abrego Garcia’s Maryland counsel—who are already suing the administration over his March expulsion—asked U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt to instruct the government to transfer him to Maryland while he awaits trial. Without such an order, they wrote, officials could “whisk Abrego Garcia away to some place far from Maryland.”
Abrego Garcia had lived for more than ten years just outside Washington with his U.S.-citizen wife and children. An immigration judge in 2019 barred his removal after finding gang threats in El Salvador were credible, but immigration authorities nonetheless deported him this spring, later calling the action a clerical mistake. The Trump administration has continued to portray Abrego Garcia as linked to MS-13, an allegation he rejects. His lawyers say the smuggling indictment is simply a post-hoc attempt to justify the wrongful deportation.
At Wednesday’s hearing Holmes laid out release terms that would place Abrego Garcia with his brother, a U.S. citizen in Maryland, but she would not finalize them without clearer assurances ICE would not intervene. Acting U.S. Attorney Rob McGuire told the court he would “coordinate” with ICE yet emphasized he could not direct the separate agency’s decisions.
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