Federal judge temporarily bars Abrego Garcia from deportation to Uganda

A federal judge in Maryland on Monday blocked the Trump administration from immediately deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda after he was arrested by ICE on Monday, delivering a temporary blow to the government’s efforts to remove the Salvadorian migrant at the center of a months-long court fight. 

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, said Monday that he filed the emergency motion after his client was taken into immigration custody in Baltimore, after he appeared there as a condition of his pretrial release from criminal custody in Tennessee.

The new filing seeks to block Abrego Garcia’s removal to Uganda until his immigration case can play out via the proper channels, ensuring due process protections — including the right to a reasonable fear interview before removal to a third country — and the right to challenge removals to certain countries due to fears of persecution.

Judge Paula Xinis said Monday that she planned to move quickly in weighing the emergency request, telling both Justice Department lawyers and attorneys for Abrego Garcia to confer privately to hash out a proposed briefing schedule, with an eye towards Friday as a possible evidentiary hearing date.

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Xinis noted at the outset of the hearing that she believed an extension of the current temporary restraining order blocking Abrego Garcia’s immediate removal from the U.S. might be “necessary,” in light of his pending removal to Uganda, even as she stressed the information before her was preliminary.

Still, she noted the daylight between the government’s plea deal offer, which would allow him to be sent to Costa Rica as a free individual in exchange for a guilty plea to the criminal charges, and the lack of assurances from Uganda, the East African nation that just days earlier agreed to accept U.S. migrants deported from the country. 

Xinis pointed to the lack of any proffer from Uganda about what protections Abreo Garcia would have, compared to what Costa Rica has provided, in terms of assuring Abrego Garcia that he would live in the country freely, and that he “would have residency papers or refugee status.”  

Crucially, Uganda has not said that he would not be refouled, or sent back to El Salvador, after being deported there.

“There’s just nothing right now on the record in that regard,” she said, noting that the silence from Uganda “is certainly taken in contrast” as to what Costa Rica has offered and detailed.

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Though Xinis stressed the information before her was preliminary, and that the Trump administration “can certainly right the ship” by providing evidence to the contrary, she said, “the contrast is significant,” at least for now.

Before adjourning the court, she also ordered the Trump administration to keep Abrego Garcia in the same ICE detention center in Virginia, where he was moved after his arrest on Monday, after his attorneys cited concerns ICE would remove him again tonight. 

Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign did not immediately rule out that possibility, prompting her to order him to be kept there.

She also reiterated, several times, that the government must comply with the court.

“Your clients are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States,” she noted pointedly to Ensign, who agreed.

“I’m going to take it from you, as an officer of the court, and on behalf of your clients, that there is the fullest intent to abide by those orders,” Xinis said, before following up again. “Is that accurate?”

“That is accurate, Your Honor,” Ensign said.