Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, has been released from criminal custody and is on his way to join his family in Maryland, his lawyers said in a statement on Friday.
Mr. Abrego Garcia had been held behind bars in Tennessee since June, when the Trump administration brought him back from El Salvador to face charges, in Federal District Court in Nashville, of having taken part in a conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the United States.
Before he was returned to U.S. soil, Mr. Abrego Garcia spent nearly three months locked up in El Salvador — mostly in a notorious megaprison for terrorists — after the Trump administration expelled him to the country in violation of a court order expressly barring him from sent there.
“Today, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is free,” his lawyers wrote. “He is presently en route to his family in Maryland after being unlawfully arrested and deported, and then imprisoned, all because of the government’s vindictive attack on a man who had the courage to fight back against the administration’s continuing assault on the rule of law.”
“He is grateful,” the lawyers added, “that his access to American courts has provided meaningful due process.”
It remains unclear what will happen next to Mr. Abrego Garcia. The Justice Department has said that if he was released from custody in Tennessee, it would likely seek to re-deport him as soon as possible. That move would require dropping the criminal charges filed against him.
If administration officials do try to expel him to El Salvador again, they would have to first persuade a judge to reverse the order that currently prohibits him from being sent there.
Under a recent Supreme Court ruling, the government has more leeway to deport Mr. Abrego Garcia to a third country. But the federal judge in Maryland who handled his original case has said that if officials choose that route, they have to give him and his lawyers at least three business days’ warning in order to mount a legal challenge to his removal.
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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