Court Orders Release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Blocks Immediate Deportation

A federal judge in Tennessee ruled Wednesday that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a migrant mistakenly deported to El Salvador, must be released in his criminal case. At the same time, a judge in Maryland issued a separate order to protect him from another swift removal from the United States.

The near-simultaneous court decisions suggest that Abrego Garcia could soon return as a free man to Maryland, where he lived with his family before his ordeal began in March with months of detention, deportation, and incarceration in El Salvador.

In recent weeks, Abrego Garcia’s future had been clouded with uncertainty, as the Justice Department indicated its intent to promptly initiate procedures to deport him again should he be released in the criminal case that was used earlier in June to reverse his erroneous expulsion.

Prosecutors charged him in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee with participating in a year-long conspiracy to smuggle undocumented migrants into the United States as a member of the violent transnational street gang MS-13.

However, in the order demanding Abrego Garcia’s release, Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., who oversees the case, expressed serious doubts regarding what he described as the government’s "weak attempts to link Abrego to MS-13."