GREENBELT, Md. — Kilmar Ábrego Garcia on Tuesday will be back in federal court, where the federal government will continue its attempt to deport him in an 18-month saga that began when he was mistakenly sent to El Salvador last year.
He was arrested in Baltimore in March 2025 after picking up his then-5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house, according to court papers. Ábrego Garcia was then sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador known as CECOT, which activists say is rife with abuses and where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside. The judge left previous orders in place last December and ordered him released from custody.
ICE officials admitted in court filings that his deportation there was an “administrative error.” The government is moving to vacate a preliminary injunction put in place by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis preventing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining and deporting Ábrego Garcia to the West African country of Liberia. His legal team is seeking to make the injunction permanent.
She added in an email that the family deserves privacy, either at home in Maryland or in Costa Rica. Ábrego Garcia, 31, has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. Because he faced danger there from a gang that had threatened his family, in 2019, an immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador.
However, the government continues to punish him for pursuing his constitutional rights and seeks to ship him to Liberia,” said Jossie Flor Sapunar, the national communications director for We Are CASA, an activist group that has supported Ábrego Garcia and his family and intends to be at the courthouse. “The government is leading the same rodeo as many times before. Sending Kilmar to Costa Rica is on the table. “Kilmar has become an international symbol of due process, a symbol which the Trump administration wants to silence.
Facing public pressure and a court order , President Donald Trump’s Republican administration brought him back in June 2025, but only after securing an indictment charging him with human smuggling in Tennessee. A federal judge dismissed that case in May 2026, finding that the Justice Department’s pursuit of criminal charges was designed to punish Ábrego Garcia for challenging his deportation. The government is appealing.
