Kilmar Abrego Garcia returns to federal court to fight deportation to Liberia

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Kilmar Ábrego Garcia returns to federal court on Tuesday as federal authorities persist in their effort to deport him, extending an 18-month ordeal that began with his mistaken deportation to El Salvador last year.

The government is moving to lift a preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis preventing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting and sending Ábrego Garcia to the West African country of Liberia.

His legal team wants to make the order permanent. The judge maintained existing rulings last December and ordered his release.

The Salvadoran national’s case became a central element of the immigration debate after his erroneous removal to his homeland last year.

Since returning, he has fought a secondary deportation to an African country proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials.

Ábrego Garcia contended that any deportation should be to Costa Rica, which previously agreed to receive him.

However, Todd Lyons, the former acting director of ICE, stated in a March 2026 memo that deporting Ábrego Garcia to Costa Rica would be "prejudicial to the United States," because the U.S. expended resources and political capital negotiating with Liberia to take third-country nationals.

The push for deportation to Liberia continued even after the U.S. reached an agreement with Costa Rica to take deportees who cannot legally return home.

"The government is leading the same rodeo as many times before. Sending Kilmar to Costa Rica is on the table. However, the government continues to punish him for pursuing his constitutional rights and seeks to ship him to Liberia," said Jossie Flor Sapunar, the national communications director for We Are CASA, an activist group that has supported Ábrego Garcia and his family and intends to be at the courthouse.

"Kilmar has become an international symbol of due process, a symbol which the Trump administration wants to silence."

She noted in an email that the family deserves privacy, whether in Maryland or Costa Rica.

Ábrego Garcia, 31, has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, though he arrived illegally as a teenager.

In 2019, an immigration judge decided he could not be sent to El Salvador because of gang threats against his family.

He was arrested in Baltimore in March 2025 after picking up his then-5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house, court filings show.

Ábrego Garcia was transferred to a mega-prison in El Salvador called CECOT, described by activists as rife with abuses where prisoners remain packed in cells and never go outside.

ICE officials conceded in court filings that his transfer was an "administrative error."

Prompted by public outcry and a court order, President Donald Trump's Republican administration returned him in June 2025, but only after securing a human smuggling indictment in Tennessee.

A federal judge dismissed the case in May 2026, ruling the Justice Department sought criminal charges to punish Ábrego Garcia for fighting deportation. The government is appealing.