A Maryland federal judge will rule soon on whether to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia from immigration custody, a decision with direct implications for detention spending, capacity use, and removal logistics. The record presented no figures on per‑day costs, contractor spending, or detention occupancy, leaving the financial footprint unclear. The government has shifted prospective removal destinations from Uganda, Eswatini, and Ghana to Liberia, while saying Costa Rica is “not an option at the moment,” without explanation. Abrego Garcia, protected from removal to El Salvador since 2019, remains detained in Pennsylvania as he seeks to reopen his case for U.S. asylum. The court’s forthcoming ruling will determine whether detention continues under an injunction or gives way to release while removal efforts and litigation proceed.
A federal judge in Maryland is poised to decide whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia should remain in immigration custody, a ruling that will ripple through budgets, detention capacity, and transport logistics even as key cost and utilization data remain undisclosed. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said she would rule as soon as possible, underscoring the legal threshold that without a final removal order, ongoing custody is difficult to justify. “You can’t fake it ’till you make it,” she said, adding, “You’ve got to have it.”
The case has already generated avoidable process costs. Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March in violation of an earlier court settlement, then returned to the United States in June. Since then, the government has sought to deport him to multiple destinations, most recently Liberia, while an injunction issued by Xinis blocks immediate removal. Federal attorneys have asked her to lift that injunction, a step that would resume removal planning and associated logistics.
In court, ICE official John Cantu testified in support of removal to Liberia and said that Costa Rica—where Abrego Garcia has said he is willing to go and which earlier gave the U.S. a guarantee he could live freely—was “not an option at the moment.” He offered few details as to why. Prior notices identified Uganda, Eswatini, and Ghana as potential destinations. Each change implies new coordination and transport planning, but the record presented Thursday did not include figures on flight scheduling costs, contractor charges, or other line items commonly tied to international removals.
The economics of continued detention also hang over the decision. Abrego Garcia remains behind bars in a detention center in Pennsylvania, according to his attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg. The government did not present per-day detention costs, capacity utilization, or contractor spending during Thursday’s hearing. Without such disclosures, the financial footprint of continued custody remains opaque, and so do the opportunity costs relative to other Department of Homeland Security or state priorities. Detention space is finite, but no numbers were provided on occupancy rates or the tradeoffs of dedicating a bed to a person with no final removal order on file.
Abrego Garcia’s legal posture further complicates the resource calculus. An immigration judge in 2019 granted him protection from removal to El Salvador after finding he faced danger there, leaving the government to pursue a third-country option. Even if Xinis orders his release, the government is expected to keep seeking deportation while he petitions to reopen his immigration case to seek asylum in the United States, a process with no guaranteed outcome. Each step entails additional casework and potential transport planning, yet the court record offered no tally of staff hours or budget allocations to date.
The government’s path has attracted scrutiny because an apparently viable alternative—removal to Costa Rica—remains unused. Abrego Garcia has said he would accept removal there, and Costa Rica previously provided the U.S. government a guarantee that he could live freely. Cantu’s assertion that this is “not an option at the moment,” without further explanation, left the judge and the public without clarity on whether diplomatic, administrative, or operational hurdles are driving the decision. For resource planners, the difference between a single definitive route and multiple abandoned destinations can be significant, but those implications were not quantified in court.
The human stakes are visible alongside the budgetary ones. Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, though he originally entered the United States illegally from El Salvador as a teenager. His mistaken deportation in March galvanized both sides of the broader policy debate over President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, and supporters rallied at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore on Aug. 25, 2025, to back him.
Thursday’s hearing in Greenbelt, Md., was also a reminder that transparency can enable better resource decisions. The court heard that there is no final order of removal in the immigration record for Abrego Garcia, a status that, in Judge Xinis’s words, weighs against continued custody. Yet the proceeding included no public accounting of detention costs, capacity utilization, or the comparative price and timing of the government’s shifting third-country plans. As Sandoval-Moshenberg put it after the hearing, the lack of a stated reason for sidelining Costa Rica “adds to the impression” of retaliatory use of the system.
Xinis said she would decide “as quickly as she could,” while noting that “these are weighty issues.” Her ruling will determine whether the fiscal burn rate of detention continues while the government pursues another removal plan, or whether monitoring outside of custody suffices while his petition to reopen proceeds. Either way, the absence of public figures on bed space, contractor spending, and transport logistics leaves policymakers and the public to assess tradeoffs with incomplete information. Subsequent filings and potential appeals will keep the court’s oversight active, with the injunction and any motion to lift it setting the next formal deadlines.
