U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
The Salvadoran national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to his home country last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials.
The government “made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in Maryland, wrote in her Tuesday order. “From this, the Court easily concludes that there is no ‘good reason to believe’ removal is likely in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger there from a gang that had threatened his family. By mistake, he was deported there anyway last year.
Facing public pressure and a court order, President Donald Trump’s administration brought him back in June, but only after securing an indictment charging him with human smuggling in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty. Meanwhile, Trump officials have said he cannot stay in the U.S. In court filings, officials have said they intended to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia.
In her Tuesday order, Xinis noted the government has “purposely — and for no reason — ignored the one country that has consistently offered to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee, and to which he agrees to go.” That country is Costa Rica.
Abrego Garcia's attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, argued in court that immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment. Immigrants can only be detained as a way to facilitate their deportation and cannot be held indefinitely with no viable deportation plan.
“Since Judge Xinis ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia released in mid-December, the government has tried one trick after another to try to get him re-detained,” Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote in an email on Tuesday. “In her decision today, she recognized that if the government were truly trying to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the United States, they would have sent him to Costa Rica long before today.”
The government should now engage in a good-faith effort to work out the details of removal to Costa Rica, Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote.
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US federal judge rules Kilmar Abrego Garcia can’t be re-detained by immigration authorities
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US federal judge rules Kilmar Abrego Garcia can’t be re-detained by immigration authorities
- Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years
Mexico’s violence-hit Guadalajara to host World Cup games
GUADALAJARA: The city of Guadalajara erupted with cartel violence this past weekend, alongside other parts of Mexico, after an army raid left a notorious drug lord dead.
Now, Guadalajara is looking ahead nervously to the World Cup this summer, in which it will host four games.
Authorities are turning to technology to keep its slice of the planet’s premier sporting event safe, as Mexico is co-hosting the tournament with the United States and Canada.
Drones, anti-drone equipment and AI-driven video surveillance systems are some of the tools the state government of Jalisco — of which Guadalajara is the capital — will deploy to provide security.
The preparations come as Jalisco endures an epidemic of disappearances and the discoveries of clandestine graves, with Guadalajara having more of its residents go missing due to brutal drug-related violence than any other city in Mexico.
On Sunday, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and one of the most wanted men in Mexico and the United States, was killed in a military operation some 130 kilometers (80 miles) from Guadalajara.
The cartel reacted with fury, triggering gunfire with security forces that left at least 57 people dead across Mexico — both soldiers and cartel members — as well as highway blockades in 20 states.
Following the burning of buses and businesses, authorities suspended football games in Guadalajara and the central state of Queretaro.
Football’s world governing body FIFA declined to comment on the violence in one of the cup’s host cities.
On Monday, the streets of Guadalajara remained semi-empty, as businesses stayed shut as classes were suspended in Jalisco. Schools also shut down in a dozen other states.
Days before, state security officials had reported that Guadalajara was “peaceful.”
- ‘Grotesque situation’ -
Jalisco is one of the states with the most disappeared people in all of Mexico, with 12,575 reported missing, according to official statistics. More than half of the cases come from Guadalajara’s metropolitan area.
Disappearances are driven by forced recruitment for criminal groups, said Carmen Chinas, an academic at the University of Guadalajara.
Family members of disappeared people have unearthed hundreds of clandestine graves as they look for their loved ones.
Some activists have expressed dismay over Guadalajara’s hosting of the World Cup.
“I don’t think there is anything to celebrate. It seems like a pretty grotesque situation to me,” said 26-year-old Carmen Ponce, whose brother Victor Hugo was disappeared in 2020.
“The country celebrates goals while we are here searching,” she said at a field where last September she and her mother found buried plastic bags containing the remains of five people.
People are also jittery about hosting World Cup games in a city that has been through so much.
Juan Carlos Contreras, who oversees the city’s security camera network, told AFP there could be protests by residents furious with the government as they search for their missing loved ones.
- ‘Economic blow’ -
Missael Robles, a 31-year-old tour guide from Guadalajara, told AFP that he’s canceled as many as 25 tours since the Oseguera violence exploded on Sunday.
“The economic blow is a big deal,” he added.
Authorities have discovered properties used by criminal groups just a few kilometers from the Akron stadium which is due to host World Cup games.
Less than two kilometers (one mile) from the sporting complex, the state prosecutor’s office raided a house and arrested two people accused of kidnapping.
AFP saw chains wrapped around metal bars in the abandoned building, with the Akron stadium visible in the distance.
Jose Raul Servin, who has been looking for his son Raul since he disappeared in April of 2018, fears that tourists coming for the World Cup could be preyed on by crime gangs.
“We don’t want anything to happen,” he said, “like what’s happened to us.”
Servin remembers with nostalgia that his son was a football fan. “If he were here, he would be happy about the World Cup,” he said.
Now, Guadalajara is looking ahead nervously to the World Cup this summer, in which it will host four games.
Authorities are turning to technology to keep its slice of the planet’s premier sporting event safe, as Mexico is co-hosting the tournament with the United States and Canada.
Drones, anti-drone equipment and AI-driven video surveillance systems are some of the tools the state government of Jalisco — of which Guadalajara is the capital — will deploy to provide security.
The preparations come as Jalisco endures an epidemic of disappearances and the discoveries of clandestine graves, with Guadalajara having more of its residents go missing due to brutal drug-related violence than any other city in Mexico.
On Sunday, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and one of the most wanted men in Mexico and the United States, was killed in a military operation some 130 kilometers (80 miles) from Guadalajara.
The cartel reacted with fury, triggering gunfire with security forces that left at least 57 people dead across Mexico — both soldiers and cartel members — as well as highway blockades in 20 states.
Following the burning of buses and businesses, authorities suspended football games in Guadalajara and the central state of Queretaro.
Football’s world governing body FIFA declined to comment on the violence in one of the cup’s host cities.
On Monday, the streets of Guadalajara remained semi-empty, as businesses stayed shut as classes were suspended in Jalisco. Schools also shut down in a dozen other states.
Days before, state security officials had reported that Guadalajara was “peaceful.”
- ‘Grotesque situation’ -
Jalisco is one of the states with the most disappeared people in all of Mexico, with 12,575 reported missing, according to official statistics. More than half of the cases come from Guadalajara’s metropolitan area.
Disappearances are driven by forced recruitment for criminal groups, said Carmen Chinas, an academic at the University of Guadalajara.
Family members of disappeared people have unearthed hundreds of clandestine graves as they look for their loved ones.
Some activists have expressed dismay over Guadalajara’s hosting of the World Cup.
“I don’t think there is anything to celebrate. It seems like a pretty grotesque situation to me,” said 26-year-old Carmen Ponce, whose brother Victor Hugo was disappeared in 2020.
“The country celebrates goals while we are here searching,” she said at a field where last September she and her mother found buried plastic bags containing the remains of five people.
People are also jittery about hosting World Cup games in a city that has been through so much.
Juan Carlos Contreras, who oversees the city’s security camera network, told AFP there could be protests by residents furious with the government as they search for their missing loved ones.
- ‘Economic blow’ -
Missael Robles, a 31-year-old tour guide from Guadalajara, told AFP that he’s canceled as many as 25 tours since the Oseguera violence exploded on Sunday.
“The economic blow is a big deal,” he added.
Authorities have discovered properties used by criminal groups just a few kilometers from the Akron stadium which is due to host World Cup games.
Less than two kilometers (one mile) from the sporting complex, the state prosecutor’s office raided a house and arrested two people accused of kidnapping.
AFP saw chains wrapped around metal bars in the abandoned building, with the Akron stadium visible in the distance.
Jose Raul Servin, who has been looking for his son Raul since he disappeared in April of 2018, fears that tourists coming for the World Cup could be preyed on by crime gangs.
“We don’t want anything to happen,” he said, “like what’s happened to us.”
Servin remembers with nostalgia that his son was a football fan. “If he were here, he would be happy about the World Cup,” he said.
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