A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from immediately deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia once he’s released from criminal custody.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis issued an emergency ruling that prohibits the Trump administration from taking the Salvadoran illegal migrant into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody for 72 hours after he is released from custody in Nashville, Tennessee, according to court documents. The suspected gangbanger is currently in jail for his alleged involvement in a years-long migrant smuggling operation.
Xinis, appointed to the bench by the Obama administration, repeatedly ripped the Trump administration in her Wednesday decree.
“Defendants have done little to assure the Court that absent intervention, Abrego Garcia’s due process rights will be protected,” the federal judge said, according to court documents.
“Separately, the requested notice is necessary to prevent a repeat of Abrego Garcia’s unlawful deportation to El Salvador by way of third-country removal,” Xinis continued. “Defendants have taken no concrete steps to ensure that any prospective third country would not summarily return Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in an end-run around the very withholding order that offers him uncontroverted protection.”
The Obama judge also ordered Abrego Garcia to be returned to the ICE Order of Supervision at the Baltimore Field Office, the closest ICE facility in Maryland, where he was originally arrested by deportation officers earlier this year, according to her order.
Abrego Garcia, a suspected member of MS-13 who was repeatedly accused of domestic abuse by his American wife, has been at the center of a political maelstrom since his mistaken deportation to El Salvador in March.
While he was an illegal migrant amenable to deportation, Abrego Garcia enjoyed a prior withholding of removal order that prohibited his repatriation to his home country of El Salvador. Despite this, he was arrested and flown to the Central American country earlier this year and served time in the Terrorism Confinement Center mega-prison before his return to the U.S. to face human smuggling charges.
The illegal migrant was once pulled over on a Tennessee highway in 2022 and suspected of human smuggling after the Tennessee Highway Patrol discovered he was transporting eight passengers with no apparent luggage. The vehicle he was driving that night belonged to Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, an illegal migrant who was sentenced to prison for human smuggling in 2020.
That 2022 traffic stop is the basis of the human smuggling investigation against him and why he remains in criminal custody in the Middle District of Tennessee.
Between 2016 and 2025, the suspected gangbanger allegedly helped smuggle illegal migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador and other countries into the U.S., according to an indictment from the Department of Justice. Abrego Garcia allegedly made over 100 trips from Texas to Maryland and elsewhere as part of the conspiracy.
In addition to transporting illegal migrants, federal prosecutors say the Salvadoran used his trips to purchase firearms and narcotics in Texas for distribution and resale in Maryland, according to court documents.
Despite the Wednesday order, the Trump administration remained steadfast in its pledge to never let Abrego Garcia freely roam the U.S. again.
“The facts remain: this MS-13 gang member, human trafficker and criminal illegal alien will never walk America’s streets again,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, said in a public statement.
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