BALTIMORE, MD—A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, granting a reprieve in the Salvadoran native’s latest legal battle.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis on Wednesday extended a temporary restraining order, barring the government from removing Abrego Garcia from the country until his case is resolved. ABC News reports that the judge also set an evidentiary hearing for Oct. 6 to address the challenge to his deportation.
Xinis said she would issue a ruling within 30 days of the hearing and ordered that Abrego Garcia must remain in custody within a 200-mile radius of the court in Maryland. He is currently being held at a detention center in Virginia.
The judge declined to order his release from immigration custody, stating that an immigration judge should decide that matter.
The ruling is the latest development in a complicated legal saga. Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national with an American wife and children, was deported in March to a prison in El Salvador despite a 2019 court order that barred his deportation to his home country due to fear of persecution. The Trump administration claimed he was a member of the MS-13 gang, which his family and attorneys deny.
He was returned to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, to which he has pleaded not guilty. After being released from criminal custody last Friday while awaiting trial, he was taken into immigration custody on Monday during a check-in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Baltimore. He was then transferred to a detention center and notified that he could face deportation to Uganda.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed a motion on Monday to reopen his immigration case and apply for asylum, arguing that deportation to a country he has no ties to would be a form of vindictive punishment.
