A federal judge in Maryland has barred immigration authorities from re-detaining Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia until a full hearing on his request for a restraining order. Judge Paula Xinis said federal officials had “affirmatively misled the tribunal” about his removal status, faulting ICE for trying to deport him despite a 2019 protection order. The ruling follows his wrongful deportation to El Salvador, ongoing human smuggling charges in Tennessee and his new asylum bid, and sets up an appeal over how far the government’s detention power can reach.
A federal judge’s order prohibiting immigration authorities from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia is emerging as a test of whether federal agencies can be forced to match their power with transparent, evidence-based decision-making.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland barred U.S. immigration authorities on Friday from taking Abrego Garcia back into custody, only hours after she had ordered his release from a detention center. She wrote that officials could not re-detain him until the court holds a hearing on his motion for a temporary restraining order, and said he is likely to succeed on the merits of any further request for relief from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. In that finding, the court signaled that the government’s conduct would be judged not just on policy prerogatives, but on documented legal authority and honest representations to the bench.
The timing underscored the tensions. The order came as Abrego Garcia arrived for a mandatory check-in at an ICE field office in Baltimore, roughly 14 hours after he walked out of a detention facility in Pennsylvania. His lawyers had urgently warned Xinis that officials could place him back into custody during the appointment. Instead, after a short meeting inside, he exited to cheers from supporters gathered outside the building. Speaking briefly to the crowd, he urged others to “stand tall” against what he described as injustices carried out by the government.
Abrego Garcia’s case has drawn national attention as an example of how detention and deportation decisions can unravel under judicial scrutiny. Earlier this year he was wrongly deported to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador despite having no criminal record and a previous grant of protection. In 2019, an immigration judge found he had a “well founded fear” of danger in El Salvador, where a gang had targeted his family, and allowed him to live and work in the United States under ICE supervision, though without residency status.
Despite that settlement, federal actions escalated. Facing public pressure and a court order, President Donald Trump’s Republican administration eventually brought him back from El Salvador in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. Prosecutors allege he accepted money to transport people who were in the country illegally; the charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee, where body camera footage shows a calm exchange before he was allowed to leave with only a warning. He has pleaded not guilty and asked a federal judge in Tennessee to dismiss the charges.
In parallel, ICE has been seeking to deport him, not to El Salvador, but to a series of African countries, even though Xinis noted the 2019 settlement protecting him from removal to his home country. Abrego Garcia has sued, arguing that the Trump administration is misusing the removal process to punish him for the public embarrassment caused by his mistaken deportation. Xinis’s written orders have been unusually blunt about federal conduct in the case. She concluded that authorities “did not just stonewall” the court but went further: “They affirmatively misled the tribunal.” She also rejected the government’s argument that she lacked jurisdiction because of a supposed final removal order, finding that no such final order had actually been filed.
That insistence on documentary clarity echoes other disputes in which courts have demanded rigorous evidence and full disclosure from federal agencies, whether over individual liberties or environmental and public-health harms. Here, the same logic is being applied to immigration detention: the government must be able to show a lawful basis for custody and removal, and must describe its actions to the court accurately.
The Department of Homeland Security has sharply condemned Xinis’ intervention. The agency called her ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration and vowed to appeal. “This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary. Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, offered a contrasting view, calling Xinis’ decisions “a victory of law over power” and saying the judge had made clear that the government cannot detain someone indefinitely without legal authority.
The latest order also puts a spotlight on ICE’s check-in system. The agency uses these appointments to track people who are released to pursue asylum or other cases in a backlogged immigration court system. Advocates say what were once routine check-ins have become high-risk encounters for many people since the start of Trump’s second term, with some taken into custody when they appear as required. In that context, Xinis’ temporary restraining order functions as a narrowly tailored safeguard against what she saw as a near-term risk of re-detention without adequate legal grounding.
For Abrego Garcia, the order has immediate human stakes. He is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child, and has lived in Maryland for years. After ICE freed him from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania—about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh—just before a court deadline, he returned home to Maryland a few hours later. Outside the Baltimore field office on Friday, supporters chanted “We are all Kilmar!” as he declared, “I stand before you a free man … with my head held up high,” adding that he came with “so much hope” and gratitude for his family and faith.
At the same time, the broader legal fight is ongoing. Alongside his civil lawsuit and the Tennessee criminal case, Abrego Garcia has applied for asylum in U.S. immigration court. A Department of Homeland Security agent has testified that he did not begin investigating the Tennessee traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador. That timeline reinforces Xinis’ concerns about whether enforcement decisions are being driven by consistent legal standards or by ad hoc responses to litigation and public backlash.
The next phase will unfold on multiple fronts. Xinis has scheduled further proceedings on the temporary restraining order, DHS has signaled an appeal, and immigration court will continue to consider Abrego Garcia’s asylum bid. Each step will require additional briefing and evidence, and the judge has warned that “for the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice,” her “narrowly crafted remedy” cannot be quickly upended without that fuller record.
For now, the order leaves Abrego Garcia free but legally vulnerable, and leaves federal agencies on notice that any move to detain or deport him will be measured against the record they build—and the scrutiny of a court demanding accountability.
