Left: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland and deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, speaks in a hotel restaurant in San Salvador, El Salvador, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Press Office Senator Van Hollen, via AP). Right: President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after arriving on Air Force One, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
A Maryland federal judge, criticized by the Trump administration for “clear legal errors,” had previously ordered the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from ICE detention. The judge accused the government of misleading the court in a habeas case.
In a 13-page document, the Department of Justice urged U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to revoke two injunctions from August 2025 and February 2026. They argued that Judge Xinis, appointed by Barack Obama, is the sole obstacle preventing Abrego Garcia’s deportation to West Africa.
The government contended that Judge Xinis caused the delay she used as a basis to release Abrego Garcia and twice prohibited his removal to a third country.
“The Court cannot both create the hindrance that delays removal and prolongs detention, while also ruling that such detention is unjustifiably prolonged,” the filing stated, critiquing Judge Xinis’ actions as legal missteps that kept Abrego Garcia in the U.S. and out of detention.
The Trump administration expressed readiness to deport the wrongly removed Salvadoran man to Liberia.
“This Court should terminate the current injunctions as they are based on legal errors and are not equitable when applied in the future. Termination is justified by the evidence provided in Exhibit A of this motion, which shows that the U.S. government is ready and able to deport the Petitioner to Liberia, with the only barrier being the Court’s injunction preventing his removal,” the filing concluded.
What followed was a complaint about Xinis’ decision to leave the government’s dissolution motion pending “for months” on end, claiming the judge “failed to acknowledge that the Court’s own prior injunction against removal is the sole impediment to Petitioner’s prompt removal.” The government framed that as an inexplicable about-face, considering the judge “invited the government to move to dissolve the injunction barring Petitioner’s removal when it was ready to effectuate the removal” of Abrego Garcia.
“This Court committed clear legal error by not recognizing the impact of its own preliminary injunction barring Plaintiff’s removal,” the DOJ added.
As Law&Crime reported in December, Xinis ruled that the Trump administration held Abrego Garcia “without lawful authority” and “affirmatively misled” the court on Costa Rica’s willingness to accept him as a refugee. While the government had floated its intentions to deport Abrego Garcia to various African countries, whether Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, or Liberia, the petitioner expressed a willingness to self-deport to Costa Rica.
The judge then ripped the administration for “their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia[.]”
In the present day, the DOJ contends that it is prepared to send the petitioner to Liberia and that Xinis’ orders are the lone roadblock to an “extremely expeditious” removal.
“The Court’s orders barring Petitioner’s removal and barring any brief detention incident to removal are the only impediment to Petitioner’s immediate removal. It is clearly erroneous, and a manifest injustice, to permit a petitioner to manufacture a legal obstacle to his removal and then hold that that legal obstacle suffices to prevent detention pending removal,” the DOJ said, seeking a ruling by April 17.
