A federal magistrate judge delivered a blow to the Trump administration on Sunday as she ruled that wrongly deported Maryland immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia cannot be detained on smuggling charges because the government failed to show he was a flight risk, among other reasons.
His release is still unlikely, however, as the government has other tools at its disposal to keep him behind bars.
Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen, was returned to the United States earlier this month from El Salvador, where he was wrongly flown in March with more than 200 other men bound for a notoriously brutal prison.
Upon his return, he faced a two-count indictment for allegedly transporting unauthorized migrants across U.S. state borders.
The charges stem from a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop in which law enforcement allegedly found nine other people in a Chevy Suburban that Abrego Garcia was driving. Prosecutors claimed that a license plate scanner picked up the SUV’s plate in Texas, where the passengers had allegedly boarded the vehicle; Abrego Garcia had supposedly told Tennessee law enforcement that he was headed to Maryland from the St. Louis area.
