{"id":442356,"date":"2025-12-12T12:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/442356\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T12:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:32:11","slug":"a-day-after-release-kilmar-abrego-garcia-must-check-in-with-immigration-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/442356\/","title":{"rendered":"A day after release, Kilmar Abrego Garcia must check in with immigration officials"},"content":{"rendered":"

BALTIMORE (AP) \u2014 Kilmar Abrego Garcia<\/a> was due to check-in with immigration authorities on Friday, some 14 hours after he was released<\/a> from detention on a judge\u2019s orders.<\/p>\n

Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint<\/a> of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison<\/a> in El Salvador. He was last taken into custody in August<\/a> during a similar check-in. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s scheduled to appear in the morning at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore. <\/p>\n

The agency freed him just before 5 p.m. on Thursday in response to a ruling from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland, who wrote federal authorities detained him after his return to the United States without any legal basis.<\/p>\n

Mistakenly deported and then returned<\/p>\n

Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland<\/a> for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, where he faces danger from a gang that targeted his family. <\/p>\n

While he was allowed to live and work in the U.S. under ICE supervision, he was not given residency status. Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported<\/a> and held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison<\/a> despite having no criminal record. <\/p>\n

Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, Trump\u2019s Republican administration brought him back to the U.S.<\/a> in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty<\/a> to those charges and asked a federal judge there to dismiss them. <\/p>\n

A lawsuit to block removal from the US<\/p>\n

The 2019 settlement found he had a \u201cwell founded fear\u201d of danger in El Salvador if he was deported there. So instead ICE has been seeking to deport him to a series of African countries<\/a>. Abrego Garcia has sued, claiming the Trump administration is illegally using the removal process to punish him for the public embarrassment caused by his deportation.<\/p>\n

In her order releasing Abrego Garcia, Xinis wrote that federal authorities \u201cdid not just stonewall\u201d the court, \u201cThey affirmatively misled the tribunal.\u201d Xinis also rejected the government\u2019s argument that she lacked jurisdiction to intervene on a final removal order for Abrego Garcia, because she found no final order had been filed.<\/p>\n

ICE freed Abrego Garcia from Moshannon Valley Processing Center, about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday just before the deadline Xinis gave the government to provide an update on Abrego Garcia\u2019s release. <\/p>\n

He returned home to Maryland a few hours later. <\/p>\n

Immigration check-in<\/p>\n

Check-ins<\/a> are how ICE keeps track of some people who are released by the government to pursue asylum or other immigration cases as they make their way through a backlogged court system<\/a>. The appointments were once routine but many people have been detained<\/a> at their check-ins since the start of President Donald Trump\u2019s second term. <\/p>\n

Abrego Garcia\u2019s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he\u2019s prepared to defend his client against further deportation efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government still has plenty of tools in their toolbox, plenty of tricks up their sleeve,\u201d Sandoval-Moshenberg said, adding he fully expects the government to again take steps to deport his client. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be there to fight to make sure there is a fair trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized Xinis\u2019 order and vowed to appeal, calling the ruling \u201cnaked judicial activism\u201d by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,\u201d said Tricia McLaughlin, the department\u2019s assistant secretary.<\/p>\n

Sandoval-Moshenberg said the judge made it clear that the government can\u2019t detain someone indefinitely without legal authority and that his client \u201chas endured more than anyone should ever have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abrego Garcia has also applied for asylum<\/a> in the U.S. in immigration court.<\/p>\n

Charges in Tennessee<\/p>\n

Abrego Garcia was hit with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling charges when the U.S. government brought him back from El Salvador. Prosecutors alleged he accepted money to transport within the United States people who were in the country illegally. <\/p>\n

The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage<\/a> from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.<\/p>\n

A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said<\/a> in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BALTIMORE (AP) \u2014 Kilmar Abrego Garcia was due to check-in with immigration authorities on Friday, some 14 hours…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":441589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[18570,11744,1613,356,69,8005,57,409,4228,8004,1612,564,8006,50,15131,80,112392,1229,6066,10425,3676,2065,61,67,370,132,68,93,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-442356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-baltimore","10":"tag-barack-obama","11":"tag-central-america","12":"tag-courts","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-el-salvador","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-immigration","17":"tag-indictments","18":"tag-kilmar-abrego-garcia","19":"tag-latin-america","20":"tag-maryland","21":"tag-md-state-wire","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-paula-xinis","24":"tag-politics","25":"tag-simon-sandoval-moshenberg","26":"tag-tennessee","27":"tag-tn-state-wire","28":"tag-tricia-mclaughlin","29":"tag-u-s-department-of-homeland-security","30":"tag-u-s-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","31":"tag-u-s-news","32":"tag-united-states","33":"tag-united-states-government","34":"tag-unitedstates","35":"tag-us","36":"tag-washington-news","37":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}