Two judges earlier in the day prevented immigration detention.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, on April 17 speaks with his Maryland constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia (L), a Salvadoran immigrant deported to El Salvador. File Photo by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele | License Photo
A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily paused Kilmer Abrego Garcia’s release from criminal custody after two judges earlier in the day ruled the accused MS-13 gang member should return to his home in Baltimore awaiting trial.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national living legally in the United States since 2019, was deported in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador because of an “administrative error.” In June, he was brought to Tennessee on two criminal charges of human smuggling. He pleaded not guilty.
Magistrate Judge Barbara Holles, who serves in the Middle District of Tennessee, determined that Abrego Garcia should remain in federal custody for 30 days “pending further order.” Magistrates are named by the court’s district judges.
Both sides sought the pause — the federal government an opportunity to appeal and his legal team to seek further court relief.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville and Paula Ixis in Maryland had blocked the government from detaining and deporting after release from criminal custody. President Barack Obama appointed both judges.
Crenshaw ruled the government “fails to provide any evidence that there is something in Abrego’s history, or his exhibited characteristics, that warrants detention.”
He said: “For the Court to find that Abrego is a member of or in affiliation with MS13, it would have to make so many inferences from the Government’s proffered evidence in its favor that such conclusion would border on fanciful.”
Minutes later, Ixis ordered the government not to take him into immigration custody once released from criminal detention. He must be under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision in Maryland, she ruled. And if there are third-party proceedings, Abrego and his counsel must be given 72 “business hours” notice, the judge ruled.
After the earlier rulings, Homeland Security Assistand Security Assisrant Secretary said in a statement to NBC News: “The facts remain, this MS-13 gang member, human trafficker and illegal alien will never walk America’s streets again. The fact this unhinged judge is trying to tell ICE they can’t arrest someone who is subject to immigration arrest under federal law is insane.”
“These rulings are a powerful rebuke of the government’s lawless conduct and a critical safeguard for Kilmar’s due process rights,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, said in a statement to CNN. “After the government unlawfully deported him once without warning, this legal protection is essential.”
Last week, Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, described him as a “horrible human being and a monster, and he should never be released free.”
She said: He has a lifetime history of trafficking individuals and of taking advantage of minors, soliciting pornography from them, nude photos of them, abusing his wife, abusing other illegals, aliens that were in this country, women that were under his care while he was trafficking them.”
In the indictment, Abrego Garcia and others are accused of participating in a conspiracy in which they “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 members and associates.”
The allegations from 2016 to this year involve a half-dozen alleged unnamed co-conspirators. Abrego Garcia and others worked to move undocumented aliens between Texas and Maryland and other states more than 100 times, according to the indictment.
In November 2022, Abrego Garcia is accused of driving a Chevrolet Suburban and was pulled over on a interstate highway in Tennessee with nine other Hispanic men without identification or luggage.
Prosecutors allege that Abrego Garcia transported narcotics to Maryland, though he wasn’t previously charged with any crimes.
These allegations were not made public after March 15 when Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison. He later went to another prison in El Salvador.
On June 10, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of him from El Salvador after a ruling by Xinis.
Earlier this month, a lawyer for DOJ said in federal court he would be deported, but not to El Salvador — if he is released from criminal custody.
Abrego Garcia, 30, is married to a U.S. citizen and has three children.
