Judge bars ICE from detaining Ábrego García, slams ‘empty’ Africa removal threats

GREENBELT, Md. (CN) — A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from taking Kilmar Ábrego García back into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, finding his extended detention in El Salvador and the United States was already unconstitutional.

In the 10-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis extended a temporary restraining order from December that required the Maryland man’s immediate release from ICE custody, explaining that an immigration judge’s recent decision to add a removal order to Ábrego García’s 2019 case did not suddenly revive a 90-day “removal period.”

“Since late 2019, respondents made no effort to remove Ábrego García to a third country,” Xinis wrote. “They have also held him in some form of detention since March 2025 until this court ordered his release, which even excepting the time spent in federal criminal custody, amounts to the presumptive six months of detention accorded to respondence under Zadvydas [v. Davis].”

*“*Add to this, the years of respondents’ inaction in effectuating third-country removal cuts decidedly against any requested finding that Ábrego García’s removal is reasonably foreseeable,” Xinis added.

Even if she did not count the three months Ábrego García was detained at the CECOT mega prison in El Salvador as time spent in ICE custody, Xinis determined the Maryland man has nonetheless shown that “no significant likelihood of removal” exists in the foreseeable future and thus must be released.

“Regardless of the actual jailer, respondents had purchased Ábrego García’s detention in El Salvador and disingenuously slow footed his return,” Xinis wrote, referencing a one-year deal between the State Department and President Nayib Bukele. “And since August 2025, respondents have refused to procure Ábrego García’s immediate removal to Costa Rica in favor of phantom removals to three (maybe four) African countries.”

The Trump administration’s messaging that it would deport the Maryland man to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and Liberia has been an “empty threat,” Xinis said, and ignores Ábrego García’s own requests to be deported to Costa Rica without providing any reasoning.

While the government maintains Liberia is still on the table, it has recently begun considering “various others,” which further undermines Liberia as a legitimate option, Xinis said. Further, the government failed to secure any travel documents by Jan. 14, which would effectuate Ábrego García’s removal.

“From this, the court easily concludes that there is no ‘good reason to believe’ that removal is likely in the reasonably foreseeable future,” Xinis said. “Respondents have done nothing to show that Ábrego García’s continued detention in ICE custody is consistent with due process.”

Many of Xinis’ rulings ordering the Maryland man’s release from immigration custody have relied on *Zadvydas,*a 2001 Supreme Court decision that created an “implicit time limitation” for immigration detention and prohibits “indefinite detention.”

Xinis, a Barack Obama appointee, explained that Immigration Judge Philip Taylor’s “nunc pro tunc” order correcting a “scrivener’s error” that omitted an order of removal to El Salvador within an Oct. 10, 2019, order granting Ábrego García’s withholding of removal order, simply corrected the meaning of the initial order, nothing more.

Taylor’s order specifically amended the 2019 decision by adding the text: “The respondent is ordered removed to El Salvador based on the charge contained in the Notice to Appeal, by the respondent’s application for withholding of removal to El Salvador pursuant to [Immigration and Nationality Act] Section 241(b)(3) is granted.”

The Justice Department argued that because the order did not become final until last month, neither did the underlying 2019 order, and therefore Ábrego García was still within the 90-day removal period. As a result, the Maryland man must be immediately re-detained, and the Zadvydas period must be reset.

Ábrego García’s attorneys rejected that interpretation, arguing the 2019 order of removal became final 90 days later in November 2019, and thus, any opportunity for the government to appeal was long since passed.

“Ábrego García has the better argument,” Xinis simply stated.

She explained that nunc pro tunc, Latin for “now for then,” is a rarely invoked legal mechanism used to make historic court records “reflect what the court actually intended to do at an earlier date” or make “the record speak the truth.”

Further, the order is clearly not one that “rewrites the history” of a case, as the government argues, Xinis said.

“To construe the effect of the nunc pro tunc order otherwise would permit the courts or litigants to create loopholes in the finality of judgments simply by recasting it via a new order issued nunc pro tunc,” Xinis wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

Follow @Ryan_Knappy