Immigration officials cannot rearrest Kelmar Abrego Garcia without a hearing and an order from a federal judge

BALTIMORE (AP) — A federal judge blocked U.S. immigration authorities Friday from redetaining Kelmar Abrego Garcia, saying she feared he could be detained again just hours after she ordered him released from a detention center.

The order came when Abrego Garcia showed up at an scheduled appointment at an ICE field office roughly 14 hours after being released from an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania.

Read more: Kelmar Abrego Garcia was released from an immigration detention center after a judge ordered his release

His lawyers had sent an urgent request to the judge, warning that ICE officials could return him to custody immediately. Instead, Abrego Garcia exited the building after a short appointment, emerging to cheers from fans gathered outside.

Speaking briefly to the crowd, he urged others to “stand tall” against what he described as injustices committed by the government.

Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He was last detained in August during a similar check-in.

U.S. District Judge Paula Shenis in Maryland said officials could not redetain him until the court held a hearing on the temporary restraining order request. She wrote that Abrego Garcia would likely succeed on the merits of any other request to be exempt from ICE detention.

Read more: The Trump administration separates thousands of immigrant families in the United States

“For the public to have any confidence in the orderly administration of justice, the court’s narrowly worded remedy cannot be overturned so quickly and easily without further briefing and study,” she wrote.

On Friday, Abrego Garcia stopped at a news conference outside the building, accompanied by a group of supporters chanting “We are all Kilmar!”

Abrego Garcia says he has ‘a lot of hope’

“I stand before you as a free man and I want you to remember me this way with my head held high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator. “I came here today with great hope and I thank God who was with me from the beginning with my family.”

He urged people to keep fighting.

After Abrego Garcia spoke, he passed through security at the field office, accompanied by his supporters.

When Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simón Sandoval Moschenburg, announced to the crowd gathered outside that his client would be walking outside the field office’s doors again, he emphasized that the legal battle was far from over.

“Yesterday’s order from Judge Shenis and now this morning’s temporary restraining order represent a victory for law over power,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

The agency released him just before 5 p.m. Thursday in response to a ruling from Shenis, who wrote that federal authorities detained him after his return to the United States without any legal basis.

He was mistakenly deported and then returned

Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the United States illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become an American citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation to his home country, where he faces the threat of a gang that targeted his family.

While he was allowed to live and work in the United States under the supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was not granted residency status. Earlier this year, he was wrongly deported and detained in a notorious Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record.

Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, the Republican administration of President Donald Trump returned him to the United States in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He pleaded not guilty to these charges and asked the federal judge there to dismiss them.

Lawsuit to prevent deportation from the United States
The 2019 settlement found he had a “well-founded fear” of danger in El Salvador if he were deported there. So, instead, ICE is seeking to deport him to a series of African countries. Abrego Garcia filed a lawsuit, claiming that the Trump administration is illegally using the deportation process to punish him for the public embarrassment caused by his deportation.

In ordering Abrego Garcia’s release, Shenis wrote that federal authorities “not only obstructed” the court, but “certainly misled the court.” Shenis also rejected the government’s argument that it did not have jurisdiction to intervene in Abrigo Garcia’s final removal order, because she found that no final order had been made.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement released Abrego Garcia from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday, ahead of a deadline given by Shenis for the government to provide an update on Abrego Garcia’s release.

He returned home to Maryland a few hours later.

Log in for immigration

Check-ins are how ICE keeps track of some people released by the government to pursue asylum claims or other immigration cases as they make their way through the backlogged court system. Appointments were previously routine, but several people have been detained upon checking in since the beginning of Trump’s second term.

The Department of Homeland Security strongly criticized Shenis’s order and vowed to appeal, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed under the Obama administration.

“This matter lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this matter vigorously in the courts,” said Assistant Secretary of State Tricia McLaughlin.

The judge made clear that the government cannot detain someone indefinitely without legal authority, Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

Abrego Garcia also applied for asylum in the United States before the immigration court.

Fees in Tennessee

Abrego Garcia was charged with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling charges when the United States government returned him from El Salvador. Prosecutors alleged that he accepted money to transport people within the United States who were in the country illegally.

The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed suspicions of smuggling among themselves. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.

A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration should act to reinstate Abrego Garcia.

Associated Press writer Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this report.