Lawyers for Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia and prosecutors seeking to expel him from the country faced a deadline Tuesday to provide a federal judge with a timeline for hearings on the widely watched case.
District Judge Paula Xinis ruled Monday that the government cannot deport Abrego Garcia for a second time until she holds a hearing on a lawsuit challenging his deportation. Xinis stressed that the government was “absolutely forbidden at this juncture” from removing Abrego Garcia from the United States.
It has been a whirlwind few days for Abrego Garcia, who has spent more than five months in detention, including time at a notorious prison in his native El Salvador. On Friday, he was released from criminal custody in Tennessee and returned to his home in the Washington suburb of Beltsville, Maryland.
On Monday he was detained again after reporting to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore. ICE officials claimed they wanted Abrego Garcia to check in for an interview, but then they detained him within a minute of his arrival, his lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said.
Hours later, Abrego Garcia's lawyers filed the federal lawsuit seeking to ensure their client was not shipped out of the country, possibly to Uganda, without a hearing. That suit put the case before Xinis.
