Above photo: Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura enter a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office on August 25, 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland. Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images.
Critics say Trump is putting Abrego Garcia “through literal hell”.
Efforts to deport him amount to a power grab.
A federal judge appeared skeptical of the Trump administration’s latest attempt to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a court scheduling hearing on August 25, the same day Abrego Garcia was rearrested during a check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The judge has ordered that the longtime Maryland resident be detained within the continental United States as a lawsuit challenging his detention and removal moves forward this week. The judge suggested previous protective orders would be extended if the administration attempts a deportation in the meantime.
The temporary order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis came only hours after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced that Abrego García was being processed for deportation to Uganda, a nation with a dismal human rights record, and to which the Salvadoran national has no ties.
The Trump administration has a long record of undermining and ignoring court orders, including in Abrego García’s case.
In a preliminary hearing in an emergency lawsuit filed by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys on August 25, Xinis also ordered that he not be removed from a federal detention facility in Virginia as attorneys for both sides negotiate and prepare legal filings overnight. The Trump administration has previously disappeared high-profile immigration detainees into remote prisons far away from family and legal support, and used that tactic to delay proceedings.
The Trump administration wrongly sent Abrego Garcia to a torturous mega-prison in his native El Salvador along with 200 other people in March before indicting him on federal smuggling charges and returning him to the United States on a court order and after domestic and international outcry. In 2019, a judge barred Abrego Garcia from removal to El Salvador due to threats of persecution. But instead of admitting wrongdoing, Noem and President Donald Trump have attempted to paint Abrego Garcia as a dangerous gangster while offering scant evidence and repeating debunked lies.
After reportedly enduring beatings and torture at the prison in El Salvador, Abrego Garcia has become a potent symbol of the deterioration of due process and deliberate intimidation of immigrants under Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Civil rights advocates say everyone within the U.S. is at risk under a rapidly expanding police state if Trump is allowed to continue jailing and able to ultimately deport Abrego Garcia in violation of the Constitution’s habeas corpus protections.
“Under this administration, any one of us could also have their due process ripped away from them and disappeared,” said Lydia Walther-Rodriguez, the chief of organizing and leadership at the immigrant rights group CASA, in a press call on August 25.
On July 24, Xinis ordered that Abrego Garcia be released on bail from a prison in Tennessee while awaiting trial for federal charges stemming from a traffic stop in December 2022, when a Tennessee highway patrol officer accused Abrego Garcia of transporting migrants. She also ordered that Abrego Garcia not be rearrested immediately after his release and be returned to supervision at ICE field office in Baltimore, where he has lived for two decades.
Abrego Garcia is undocumented — a civil, not criminal infraction — but married to a U.S. citizen, and his attorneys call the federal smuggling charges “preposterous.” His wife has said he was pulled over while driving through Tennessee with fellow construction workers, and has said he does regularly to safely transport co-workers between job sites. Abrego Garcia immigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2011 to escape death threats from gangs and has not been convicted of any crimes.
“The Trump administration is putting Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his family through literal hell,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, in a statement. “Instead of admitting their failures, they lied to Kilmar to detain him once again.”
Abrego Garcia was released from custody on Friday but was rearrested by immigration police in Baltimore on Monday after spending a fleeting weekend at home with his wife and child. He had requested the July 24 order releasing him from custody be delayed by 30 days to avoid deportation while considering his legal options. As his lawyers expected, Abrego Garcia was detained again after voluntarily showing up for a hastily scheduled check-in at the Baltimore ICE office, where a large crowd gathered to support him and his family.
“My name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and I want you to remember this, remember that I am free, and I was able to be reunited with my family,” he told supporters in Spanish that was translated into English.
The arrest was coupled with an official announcement from Noem, who said that DHS was processing Abrego Garcia for deportation to Uganda, a country on an entirely different continent than both the U.S. and El Salvador. Last week, the Trump administration struck a deal with Uganda to take an unknown number of asylum seekers detained at the U.S. border, part of a broader effort to send people to third countries where they have no connections. In a statement, Noem repeated the litany of criminal accusations the Trump administration has leveled against Abrego Garcia but has so far failed to back up with hard evidence.
“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,” Noem wrote on August 25.
During the preliminary hearing, Xinis said she would have legal authority to extend protective orders blocking Abrego Garcia’s removal from the U.S. if Noem were to move forward with plans to send him to Uganda without due process and assurances that the Ugandan government would not send him back to El Salvador. However, that decision would have to be made after an evidentiary hearing that will likely be scheduled for later this week.
“Kilmar should be home with his family, but Trump doesn’t care about the lives of working families,” Mitchell said. “What he wants is unlimited power to disappear people based on what they look like, where they were born, or what they believe.”
The Trump administration reportedly attempted to coerce Abrego Garcia into self-deporting by giving him the option while incarcerated in Tennessee of either pleading guilty to the smuggling charges and moving to Costa Rica, or being deported to Uganda. Referring to news reports, Xinis warned the government’s attorneys that this would be illegal.
“You can’t condition the relinquishment of constitutional rights in that regard … you could get an involuntary guilty plea out of anyone if you do that,” Xinis said during the preliminary hearing.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, said his client was arrested within 60 seconds of showing up for his check-in with ICE. The ICE officers declined to offer an explanation or tell his attorneys and family where they were taking him.
“He is entitled to a ‘reasonable fear’ interview,” Sandoval-Moshenberg told reporters on Monday. “They can’t put him on a plane. That seems to me to be such an obvious fact, that one ought not to have to file a lawsuit in order to vindicate the right to not be deported while you are waiting for [the government to] determine whether or not you are going to be deported.”
Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, has continued to support him throughout his ordeal. Walther-Rodriguez said Vasquez Sura confronted ICE agents when her husband was detained on Monday.
“She looked at the officers firmly and told them: When they go home tonight, they should look at their children and they should remember this moment and what they did today, ripping away her husband from their children,” Walther-Rodriguez said.
