Judge Orders ICE Not To Re-Detain Abrego Garcia

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge has blocked U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) from re-arresting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, one of the men at the center of the Trump administration’s deportation battles.

The Salvadoran national’s case attracted attention across the country, including widespread protests, after the federal government detained him in March 2025 and shipped him to El Salvador’s maximum security prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, along with an airplane full of other deportees.

He was later returned to the United States, where he has had long-running legal battles with the administration.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return last year, ruled on Feb. 17 that he cannot be deported again because the federal government has not presented a feasible plan for removing him from the country.

The judge said that despite releasing Abrego Garcia, the government appeared to be making plans to re-detain him, so Abrego Garcia filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order to prevent being re-detained.

The court previously granted the requested order.

In the new order, the court granted Abrego Garcia’s request to upgrade the temporary restraining order to an injunction to prevent him from being re-detained.

Abrego Garcia, who entered the United States illegally more than a decade ago, had been living in Maryland when federal agents arrested him.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security takes the position that Abrego Garcia is a “violent criminal illegal alien, and MS-13 gang member,” who “belongs behind bars and off American soil.”

Abrego Garcia, who is facing separate criminal charges, denies being a member of MS-13, which has been designated a terrorist organization.

Xinis previously ordered his release on Dec. 11, 2025, finding that because the federal government had never issued a final order of removal against him, it could not detain him in order to force him from the country.

The government said in a brief last month that Abrego Garcia may be detained because an immigration judge issued an order of removal on Dec. 11, 2025, that became final on Jan. 13 of this year.

Detention after that order “does not require that the country of removal be certain in order for detention to be lawful,” the brief said.

The judge suggested the federal government is not serious about removing Abrego Garcia from the United States.

Since he secured release from criminal custody in August 2025, the government has “made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success,” she said.

The judge said that, given the federal government’s maneuvering in the case, it was doubtful that Abrego Garcia would be deported in the “reasonably foreseeable future,” so he may not be re-arrested or put into immigration detention.

“Respondents have done nothing to show that Abrego Garcia’s continued detention in ICE custody is consistent with due process,” Xinis said.

In April 2025, Xinis had ordered that Abrego Garcia be returned to the United States from the prison in El Salvador.

The same month, the Supreme Court ordered that the federal government take steps to bring him back to the United States.

The government of El Salvador cooperated, and Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States in June 2025.

At the same time, Abrego Garcia is currently facing federal criminal charges in Tennessee related to the alleged unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.

He has entered not guilty pleas to the charges.

The May 2025 indictment brought against Abrego Garcia alleges that he “conspired to bring undocumented aliens to the United States from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere, ultimately passing through Mexico before crossing into Texas.”

It alleges that Abrego Garcia and his co-conspirators obtained financial payments from the undocumented individuals for unlawfully transporting them into and around the United States.

The indictment also alleges Abrego Garcia was “a member and associate of the transnational criminal organization … [known as] MS-13,” which it describes as “a criminal enterprise engaged in … acts and threats involving murder, extortion, narcotics trafficking, firearms trafficking, alien smuggling, and money laundering.”

Abrego Garcia “used his status in MS-13 to further his criminal activity” over the life of the criminal conspiracy during which he and co-conspirators “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens … many of whom were MS-13 members and associates,” according to the indictment.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have called the case “baseless.”

“There’s no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,” attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the U.S. Department of Justice, which represents federal agencies in court. No reply had been received as of publication time.