Federal judge to decide whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia should return to immigration custody

The Associated Press
December 22, 2025, 12:10 AM


Kilmar Abrego Garcia listens during a rally ahead of a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge's order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)(AP/Stephanie Scarbrough)

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A federal judge on Monday will hear arguments about whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be returned to immigration custody after being free for just over a week.

Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador has become a lightning rod for both sides of the immigration debate, had been in immigration detention since August. In that time, the government has said it planned to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia. However, officials have made no effort to deport him to the one country he has agreed to go to — Costa Rica. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in Maryland, has even accused the government of misleading her by falsely claiming that Costa Rica was unwilling to take him.

The government’s “persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” she wrote.

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