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Lawyers for Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia filed an emergency motion Thursday asking a federal judge to order their client’s return to Maryland, and to block ICE officials from deporting him while his criminal case in Tennessee continues to play out.
In an emergency filing, lawyers for Abrego Garcia urged U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to order their client’s return to the District of Maryland “immediately upon his release from confinement” in the Middle District of Tennessee, and for the judge to order the Trump administration to refrain from moving their client outside the U.S., or the District of Maryland, ahead of his criminal trial in Tennessee.
It’s the latest move in a months-long legal fight over the status of the wrongfully deported Salvadorian migrant.
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Demonstrators gather to protest against the deportation of immigrants to El Salvador on Apr. 24, 2025, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
In the filing, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers clarified they are not seeking to litigate his Tennessee criminal case — a separate matter from the civil case Xinis handled earlier this year, when she ordered Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador after he was deported in March in what Trump officials called an administrative error.
Abrego Garcia’s March deportation kicked off a months-long court fight to secure his release and return to U.S. soil, despite both a federal court order and a Supreme Court ruling requiring the administration to “facilitate” his return. The government eventually complied after months of delay and threats from a federal judge in Maryland to pursue potential contempt proceedings.
Upon return, he was immediately taken into custody for alleged federal crimes stemming from a 2022 traffic stop — prompting a flurry of questions as to when the investigation and impaneling of a grand jury, which indicted him on May 21, 2025, would have taken place.
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Demonstrators gather outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., to protest the continued detention of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant and alleged MS-13 member who was deported to El Salvador in March. (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital)
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia told Xinis Thursday that their motion “simply seeks to ensure that when Abrego Garcia is released from criminal custody, he returns to, and remains in, this District (other than to travel to Tennessee as needed), until further order from this Court.”
Their remarks come just days after a federal magistrate judge in Tennessee ordered Abrego Garcia’s release pending trial in his criminal case.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes said in her Sunday order that the government failed to prove its case during an arraignment hearing earlier this month that Abrego Garcia was a “serious risk” of fleeing or obstructing justice if he were to be released pending trial for the criminal charges.
It also comes as part of a months-long court fight over Abrego Garcia’s status following his March deportation to El Salvador, and the government’s compliance with court orders to return him.
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Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-MD, meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia at an undisclosed location in El Salvador. (Sen. Van Hollen’s Office via Getty Images)
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked Xinis earlier this month impose sanctions on the Trump administration for what they argued were the administration’s “egregious” and “repeated violations” of discovery obligations in the civil case, urging the court to compel the Trump administration to comply with production of information requests, which they say the administration has improperly withheld, as well as to “investigate the extent of the government’s willful noncompliance.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for the Trump administration urged the court to dismiss the civil case, arguing it is now moot since Abrego Garcia is back on U.S. soil.
Xinis has yet to rule on either motion. Still, his months long court fight in Maryland, and now Tennesee, have become a national flashpoint in the broader fight over President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies in his second White House term.
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The Trump administration has repeatedly vowed that Abrego Garcia would be taken into ICE detention, should he be released from federal custody in Tennessee. This fact was stressed Thursday by Abrego Garcia’s legal team as they urged Xinis Thursday to take urgent action to keep him in the U.S., and in the District of Maryland.
“If this Court does not act swiftly, then the Government is likely to whisk Abrego Garcia away to some place far from Maryland,” lawyers said in their emergency filing.
