Nine months ago, immigration agents arrested a little-known Salvadoran sheet metal worker named Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia in the parking lot of a Home Depot in suburban Maryland as he was driving with his 5-year-old son.
The arrest and subsequent deportation of Mr. Abrego Garcia set in motion a byzantine legal journey that has now passed through every level of the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, and has been heard by multiple judges. One recently remarked on the saga’s “tortured history” spanning two civil cases and a separate criminal case.
In its parallel efforts to prosecute Mr. Abrego Garcia and to re-expel him from the country, the Justice Department has spent countless hours and untold sums of money pursuing an immigrant who has emerged as one of the most prominent symbols of President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.
The department has also made numerous slip-ups in its handling of the cases, eliciting the ire of the judges overseeing them. The judges have said that department lawyers flouted orders, ignored due process, stonewalled proceedings, misled courts and most likely acted out of vindictive retribution against Mr. Abrego Garcia.
Here is a look at some of the major milestones — and missteps — in the cases.
March 12: Mr. Abrego Garcia is taken into custody by federal agents, accused of being in the country illegally. On the basis of evidence that judges later find to be lacking, the authorities also claim he is a member of the violent street gang MS-13.
March 15: Mr. Abrego Garcia is deported to El Salvador without any opportunity to challenge his removal in the courts. Even though the Trump administration ultimately acknowledges that his expulsion was an “administrative error,” violating a previous court order that expressly barred him from being sent back to his homeland, he is housed in a notorious prison built for terrorists.
April 4: After Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife sues the administration, Judge Paula Xinis of Federal District Court in Maryland orders Trump officials to quickly bring him back from El Salvador.
April 10: The Supreme Court upholds but clarifies Judge Xinis’s order. The justices say that the administration is not compelled to immediately bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States, but that it does have to “facilitate” his release from Salvadoran custody. The court’s unanimous decision finds that Mr. Abrego Garcia was expelled from the country without due process.
April 14: At an Oval Office news conference, top Trump officials, along with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, make clear that they have no intention of returning Mr. Abrego Garcia, whom they call a terrorist, to the United States.
April 15: Judge Xinis, losing patience with the administration, declares that “nothing has been done” to comply with the Supreme Court’s order to take steps to free Mr. Abrego Garcia. She says she will open an investigation into the administration’s recalcitrance, raising the possibility of contempt charges.
April 27: Robert E. McGuire, the acting U.S. attorney in Nashville, begins working on a criminal case against Mr. Abrego Garcia based on a 2022 traffic stop in which he was found to be driving a van with undocumented immigrants. Mr. Abrego Garcia was released from the traffic stop at the time without charges being filed.
April 30: A top official in the office of the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, emails Mr. McGuire to say that the prosecution of Mr. Abrego Garcia is a “top priority,” according to emails made public on Tuesday.
May 21: Mr. McGuire’s team in Nashville secures a sealed indictment against Mr. Abrego Garcia, accusing him of taking part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants as a member of MS-13. The day the charges are filed, a top prosecutor in Mr. McGuire’s office, Ben Schrader, quits his job.
June 6: The indictment against Mr. Abrego Garcia is unsealed and he is returned to the United States despite repeated assertions by top Trump officials that they were powerless to do exactly that. At a news conference, Attorney General Pam Bondi makes an unusual move, leveling accusations against Mr. Abrego Garcia that were not formally charged in the indictment and linking him to murder and the abuse of women.
July 2: Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers file court papers claiming he was beaten, deprived of sleep and psychologically tortured during the nearly three months he spent in Salvadoran custody.
July 23: Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. orders Mr. Abrego Garcia to be freed from criminal custody in Nashville, ruling he is not a danger to the community and casting doubt on the allegations that he belongs to MS-13. At almost the same time, Judge Xinis issues a separate order in Maryland protecting him from being hastily expelled from the country again.
Aug 23: Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers accuse the administration of trying to “coerce” him to plead guilty in his criminal case by threatening to redeport him to Uganda. The lawyers also say that Trump officials have consented to expel Mr. Abrego Garcia to the one place he has agreed to go — Costa Rica — but only if he admits guilt.
Aug. 25: Rejecting the government’s proposal, Mr. Abrego Garcia is detained again three days after being formally released from criminal custody — this time, by immigration officials. After vowing for weeks to prosecute him, the Trump administration now says plans are underway to expel him to Uganda.
Sept. 5: After Ugandan officials refuse to take Mr. Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration abruptly changes course, saying it will now send him to the small African nation of Eswatini.
Oct. 3: As the administration scrambles to find a country — aside from Costa Rica — willing to accept Mr. Abrego Garcia, Judge Crenshaw in Nashville finds there is a “realistic likelihood” that the Justice Department filed the charges against Mr. Abrego Garcia as part of a vindictive effort to seek retribution against him.
Oct. 24: The Trump administration suddenly floats a new plan for Mr. Abrego Garcia, saying it now wants to expel him to Liberia. The proposal comes as Judge Xinis expresses strong doubt that the administration has the authority to continue detaining Mr. Abrego Garcia as it looks for a new place to deport him to.
Dec. 11: Judge Xinis, annoyed by the administration’s protracted inability to settle on a plan for Mr. Abrego Garcia, orders him to be freed from custody for the second time. In a scathing order, she accuses officials of disobeying and even purposefully misleading her at times, reminding them that the contempt investigation she began in April still looms as a threat.
Dec. 30: Judge Crenshaw unseals several excerpts from internal emails suggesting that the Justice Department may have misled him in its repeated claims that local prosecutors led by Mr. McGuire acted alone in seeking to indict Mr. Abrego Garcia. The emails indicate that senior department leaders, including Mr. Blanche, the deputy attorney general, were more involved in the process than anyone has acknowledged so far.
Jan. 28: Judge Crenshaw intends to hold an evidentiary hearing in Federal District Court in Nashville to further explore the question of whether the administration brought the charges against Mr. Abrego Garcia vindictively.
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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