Kilmar Abrego García passed the first test of his freedom this Friday when he was not arrested when leaving an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Baltimore, Maryland. District Judge Paula Xinis issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the Salvadoran from being arrested after showing up for his appointment with immigration authorities, as happened last August.
On Thursday, Xinis ordered his release because he understood there was no legal basis to keep him in prison, and Abrego García left the ICE detention center in Pennsylvania, where he was being held. Lawyers for the Salvadoran man, who was mistakenly deported in March and sent back to the United States to face criminal charges for human trafficking, asked for protection so federal agents could not arrest him again.
“I stand here today with my head held high and I will continue to fight and stand firm against all the injustices that this government has committed against me,” said Abrego García. “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws and I believe this injustice will end,” he told supporters accompanying him.
Abrego García returned to Maryland with his family after being detained for nearly five months in Pennsylvania. After spending only three days free upon his return to the United States, federal agents arrested him in August when he presented himself at an immigration checkpoint, like the one he went to this Friday. This time, Abrego García’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, announced to the crowd gathered outside that his client would walk through the office doors again, but added that the legal battle was not yet over.
“Judge Xinis’s order yesterday and now this morning’s temporary restraining order represent a victory of law over power,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
Abrego García won a victory thanks to Judge Xinis’ rulings, contravening the administration’s efforts to keep him in prison and deport him. The spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Tricia McLaughlin, already anticipated yesterday that the government planned to fight “tooth and nail” against the legal decision.
The 30-year-old Salvadoran became a symbol of abuses committed as part of Trump’s anti-immigration crusade when he was mistakenly deported last March. Abrego García benefited from the protection that a judge granted him in 2019 so that he would not be deported to El Salvador, knowing that his fear of reprisals was well-founded. The Salvadoran fled his country at the age of 16 after facing threats from the Barrio 18 criminal gang. He lived in Maryland with his wife and three children and worked as a metalworker.
Despite the court order, he was sent to the Containment Center for Terrorists (Cecot) in the Central American country, where he was tortured, he said. Although the administration admitted it made a mistake in deporting him, he was imprisoned in El Salvador until June. Social and political pressure succeeded in getting him sent back to the United States, but with a new charge of human trafficking. Despite its mistake, the Trump administration has worked to present Abrego García as a criminal, a member of the MS-13 criminal gang, who cannot remain in the United States. Faced with the impossibility of sending him to El Salvador, he considered deporting him to a third African country. The last country chosen, after the refusal of several countries, was Liberia.
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