Maryland Man Deported: Return Order, Indictment, Re-Deportation Fight

The Kilmar Abrego Garcia case is the legal fight over a Maryland construction worker whom the Trump administration deported to El Salvador in March 2025 in violation of a 2019 court order, prompting a unanimous Supreme Court ruling that the government had to bring him back, a federal criminal indictment that was later thrown out as vindictive, and a series of attempts to deport him again that courts have so far blocked. He was released from immigration detention in December 2025 and is living in Maryland while appeals and immigration proceedings continue.

What Happened in March 2025

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who had lived in Maryland since 2011 and is married to a U.S. citizen, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 12, 2025, and told his immigration status had changed based on alleged MS-13 ties. Three days later he was placed on a flight to El Salvador with more than 200 other men and handed over to Salvadoran authorities, who sent him to the CECOT mega-prison.¹

The removal was unlawful on its face. In October 2019, Baltimore immigration judge David M. Jones had granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal after finding he faced a “clear probability of future persecution” from gang members in El Salvador. That order did not block deportation to other countries, but it specifically barred the United States from sending him back to El Salvador.²³⁴

At CECOT, Abrego Garcia later told the court, he was beaten on arrival, held in an overcrowded windowless cell, denied contact with family or lawyers for more than a month, and lost 31 pounds in his first two weeks. He was transferred to a different Salvadoran prison in April 2025.⁵

The Supreme Court’s Order to Return Him

His lawyers sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, and on April 4, 2025, Judge Paula Xinis issued a preliminary injunction ordering the government to facilitate his return by April 7. The Fourth Circuit denied the government’s stay request, and the administration took the case to the Supreme Court.³

On April 10, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Noem v. Abrego Garcia. The justices vacated the specific April 7 deadline but upheld the core of Judge Xinis’s order: the government had to “facilitate” his release from Salvadoran custody and ensure his case was handled as it would have been had the unlawful removal never occurred. The Court sent the case back to Judge Xinis to clarify the scope of the directive, flagging that the word “effectuate” in her original order was unclear and could intrude on executive authority over foreign affairs.⁶⁷

In a separate statement joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, Justice Sotomayor called the deportation an “egregious error” and warned that the government’s jurisdictional argument implied it could “deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.”⁶

Return, Indictment, and Dismissal

Abrego Garcia stayed in Salvadoran custody for nearly three months after the Supreme Court ruled. The government only arranged his transfer back after federal prosecutors in the Middle District of Tennessee obtained a two-count human smuggling indictment, and he arrived in the United States on June 6, 2025.³

The charges arose from a November 2022 traffic stop in which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers who had no luggage. At the time, the officer let him go with a warning and a federal investigation closed without charges. His wife said he worked in construction and regularly drove coworkers between job sites. He pleaded not guilty.⁸⁹

On May 22, 2026, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw dismissed the indictment, ruling the prosecution was “vindictive and selective” and an “abuse of prosecutorial power.” Judge Crenshaw found the government had reopened the closed 2022 investigation only after federal courts ordered Abrego Garcia’s return, and wrote that “absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal… the Government would not have brought this prosecution.” He identified Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh as the “moving force” behind the reopened probe and cited televised statements by then-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as direct confirmation that the executive branch had opened the case in response to the court-ordered return.¹⁰¹¹

The ruling was the first time a federal judge threw out a Trump administration criminal case on vindictive-prosecution grounds. The Department of Justice called the ruling “wrong and dangerous” and said it would appeal to the Sixth Circuit.¹²¹³

The Fight Over Re-Deportation

After Abrego Garcia returned to the United States, ICE re-detained him in August 2025 and the administration moved to deport him again, this time to Uganda. His lawyers argued the plan was retaliation for his legal wins. Costa Rica had offered to accept him and grant refugee status, and the government had floated sending him there if he pleaded guilty to the smuggling charges. When he refused the plea, officials pressed for removal to African countries where he had no ties.¹⁴

Judge Xinis blocked the removal, calling the government’s insistence on Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, or Liberia rather than Costa Rica “punitive.” In a 31-page opinion she also found the government had “affirmatively misled the tribunal” about Costa Rica’s willingness to take him, which she said remained “firm, unwavering, and unconditional.”¹⁵¹⁶

On the evening of December 11, 2025, Justice Department lawyers tried a different tactic. They went to Immigration Judge Phillip Taylor, who issued a sua sponte order “correcting scrivener’s error” that retroactively added an explicit removal order to El Salvador to the 2019 ruling. The government argued the amended order reset the clock on its authority to detain Abrego Garcia.¹⁷

Judge Xinis rejected that argument the next day with an emergency restraining order, and later ruled that the nunc pro tunc order simply corrected the record to reflect the original court’s intent. It did not, she wrote, rewrite the history of the case or create a new detention timeline. Otherwise, she wrote, courts and litigants could “create loopholes in the finality of judgments simply by recasting it via a new order.”¹⁸

Where the Case Stands Now

Judge Xinis ordered ICE to release Abrego Garcia on December 11, 2025, finding the agency had been holding him “without legal authority.” He left the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania and arrived home in Prince George’s County, Maryland, that evening.¹⁹²⁰

In February 2026, Judge Xinis extended the order barring ICE from re-detaining him, relying on the Supreme Court’s Zadvydas v. Davis precedent to find no significant likelihood of removal in the foreseeable future.¹⁸ On June 2, 2026, new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a Senate subcommittee the government would be “happy to send” Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, a shift from months of resistance; his lawyers immediately submitted the remarks to Judge Xinis, though whether the statement reflects official policy is not clear.²¹ The government’s appeal of the dismissed smuggling charges is pending in the Sixth Circuit, and the broader immigration case continues before Judge Xinis in Maryland.¹¹

What the Gang Allegations Rest On

The administration’s public case that Abrego Garcia belongs to MS-13 traces back to two documents from his 2019 bond hearing: a federal I-213 form and a Prince George’s County Police gang field interview sheet. The interview sheet was prepared by a detective who was later suspended and relied on a confidential informant who labeled Abrego Garcia a “chequeo,” or low-level recruit, based in part on his wearing a Chicago Bulls hat. The alleged clique, the “Westerns,” operates in Brentwood, Long Island, where Abrego Garcia has never lived.²²

Abrego Garcia has no criminal convictions, has consistently denied gang membership, and attended his yearly immigration check-ins without incident until he was detained in March 2025.⁹ The 2019 withholding order protecting him was itself based on his fear of persecution by Barrio 18, MS-13’s main rival, a point his lawyers say is difficult to square with the government’s current claim that he is an MS-13 member.²²

1
Politico. Kilmar Abrego Garcia Salvadoran Prison Account
2
SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Win Set Up Salvadorans Fight to Remain in U.S.
3
ABC News. Timeline of Wrongful Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador
4
DHS. Kilmar Abrego Garcia MS-13 Gang Member History of Violence
5
NPR. Abrego Garcia El Salvador Prison Beaten Torture
6
Supreme Court of the United States. Noem v. Abrego Garcia
7
Cornell Law Institute. Noem v. Abrego Garcia
8
PBS NewsHour. Federal Judge Dismisses Human Smuggling Charges Against Kilmar Abrego Garcia
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BBC News. Kilmar Abrego Garcia BBC Investigation
10
Tennessee Lookout. In Nashville a Federal Judge Dismisses Indictment Against Kilmar Abrego Garcia
11
Politico. Judge Dismisses Criminal Case Against Kilmar Abrego Garcia
12
New York Times. Abrego Garcia Case Dismissed Trump Administration
13
Tennessee Bar Association. Abrego Garcia Appeal Notice
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CNN. Kilmar Abrego Garcia Baltimore Rally
15
ABC News. Mullin U.S. Happy to Send Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica
16
Lawfare. The Situation One Judicial Opinion That Sums Up Everything
17
National Review. More Trump DOJ Hijinks in Abrego Garcia Saga
18
Courthouse News Service. Judge Bars ICE From Detaining Abrego Garcia Slams Empty Africa Removal Threats
19
ACLU of Maryland. ACLU Maryland Statement on Release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia From Immigration Detention
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Maryland Matters. Kilmar Abrego Garcia Out of ICE Custody Leaves With Head Held Up High
21
New York Times. Abrego Garcia Costa Rica Mullin
22
Lawfare. Abrego Garcia and MS-13 What Do We Know