Kilmar Abrego García will not be detained by immigration authorities, according to his attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, after a federal judge blocked the government from detaining him again just before his appearance before immigration authorities in Baltimore.
“Shortly after midnight, we filed a request for a temporary restraining order with Judge Xinis, and at 7:30 a.m. she granted the temporary restraining order prohibiting Kilmar Abrego García from being arrested again at this checkpoint today. As a result of that, I am pleased to announce that Mr. Abrego García will be walking out those doors again later this morning,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
Xinis accepted a request for an emergency temporary restraining order from Abrego García’s attorneys because an immigration judge appeared to add a deportation order to Abrego García’s immigration record.
Kilmar Abrego García arrives for check-in at the ICE Baltimore field office in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 12, 2025.
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Abrego García was released from an immigration detention center on Thursday after Judge Xinis ordered his release, arguing that the government could not keep him in immigration detention because he was never issued a deportation order.
But that night, an immigration judge issued a rare ruling saying he had “corrected” an error in Abrego García’s file and appeared to add a deportation order.
Immigration Judge Philip Taylor said in his order that Abrego García’s deportation order “was mistakenly omitted” in a 2019 immigration hearing, according to documents obtained by ABC News.
“The order of removal to El Salvador, which should have preceded the order granting the stay of removal to El Salvador, was wrongly omitted,” Taylor said.
Kilmar Abrego García arrives for check-in at the ICE Baltimore field office in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 12, 2025.
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Abrego García, a Salvadoran who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT megaprison, despite a 2019 court order prohibiting his deportation to that country for fear of persecution, after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the MS-13 criminal gang, which he denies.
he was brought back to the US in June to face human trafficking charges in Tennessee, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
After being released to his brother’s custody in Maryland pending trial, he was arrested again by immigration authorities and held in a detention center in Pennsylvania.
In his order Thursday, Xinis said that “since Abrego García’s unjust detention in El Salvador, he has been detained again, again without legal authorization.
“The circumstances of Abrego García’s detention since his release from criminal custody cannot be reconciled with the ‘basic purpose’ of holding him for deportation,” Xinis said.
Xinis, citing reports from ABC News and others, said that at the same time the government could have deported Abrego García to Costa Rica, his preferred country to deport him.
Kilmar Abrego García arrives for his first check-in at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Baltimore Field Office the day after a federal judge ordered his release from detention in Pennsylvania, December 12, 2025 in Baltimore.
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“Respondents’ calculated effort to take Costa Rica ‘off the table’ failed,” Xinis wrote. “Within 24 hours, Costa Rica, through Minister Zamora Cordero, communicated to multiple news sources that its offer to grant Abrego García residency and refugee status is, and always has been, firm, unbreakable and unconditional.”
In August, Xinis blocked the government from expelling Abrego García from the United States until the habeas case challenging his expulsion was resolved in court. The habeas petition was granted Thursday.
“The story of the Abrego García case is as well-known as it is extraordinary,” Xinis wrote in his decision Thursday.
