A federal judge on Thursday ordered the release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in March, saying it was “troubling” that the Trump administration had kept him in custody for nearly four months while promising to re-expel him from the country without actually having done so.
The ruling by the judge, Paula Xinis, was a stinging defeat for the administration in a long and byzantine saga that over the past year has transformed Mr. Abrego Garcia from an unknown Salvadoran migrant living in Maryland into one of the best-known symbols of President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.
Judge Xinis’s ruling, issued in Federal District Court in Maryland, meant that Mr. Abrego Garcia would be both free from immigration custody and, at least for now, out from under the immediate shadow of being deported from the country yet again.
But while the ruling was a stern rebuke of how Trump officials have handled Mr. Abrego Garcia’s multiple, intersecting cases, it was unlikely to be the final word in his story. The Justice Department could appeal the decision, and administration officials could also seek to open a new immigration proceeding against him.
Moreover, Mr. Abrego Garcia is still facing separate criminal charges of smuggling undocumented immigrants in a different court altogether in Nashville.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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