Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported in March earlier than being introduced again to the U.S. to face new felony expenses, was taken into immigration custody after checking in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement at its workplace in Baltimore on Monday morning, his legal professional stated.
Abrego Garcia was detained as quickly as he entered ICE’s workplace, legal professional Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg stated.
“We requested the ICE officer what the rationale for his detention was, the ICE officer did not reply,” Sandoval-Moshenberg stated, including that ICE officers wouldn’t say which detention heart his consumer could be taken to.
“We requested the ICE officer for a replica of any paperwork that is being served on him at present, the ICE officer would not decide to even giving us that paperwork,” Sandoval-Moshenberg stated.
Lower than 24 hours after being released from criminal custody in Tennessee on Friday, ICE notified Abrego Garcia’s attorneys that he could also be deported to Uganda and ordered him to report back to their workplace in Maryland.
The notification from ICE got here after Abrego Garcia rejected a plea deal to be deported to Costa Rica in trade for pleading responsible to human smuggling expenses and remaining in jail, based on a court docket submitting from his attorneys.
Within the submitting, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys accused the federal authorities of making an attempt to power their consumer to just accept a responsible plea or face deportation to East Africa.
Kilmar Abrego, attends an occasion with supporters, as he seems for a check-in on the ICE Baltimore area workplace three days after his launch from felony custody in Tennessee, in Baltimore, Maryland, August 25, 2025.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — regardless of a 2019 court docket order barring his deportation to that nation as a result of concern of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the felony gang MS-13, which his household and attorneys deny.
He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face expenses in Tennessee of allegedly transporting undocumented migrants throughout the U.S. whereas he was residing in Maryland. He has pleaded not responsible.
In July, U.S. District Choose Paula Xinis ordered that, ought to he be launched whereas awaiting trial, Abrego Garcia be positioned below ICE supervision in Maryland, the place he was residing along with his spouse and kids earlier than he was mistakenly deported in March, is critical to “present the type of efficient aid to which a wrongfully eliminated alien is entitled upon return.”
Xinis additionally stated that if the federal government intends to deport Abrego Garcia to a 3rd nation, it wants to supply 72 hours’ discover.
The order allowed the Trump administration to provoke “lawful immigration proceedings” when Abrego Garcia returned to Maryland. The immigration proceedings could or could not embody “lawful arrest, detention and eventual elimination,” Xinis stated in July.
In a habeas lawsuit filed Monday morning, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys accuse the federal authorities of taking him into custody with out offering him the suitable to be heard “on his expressed fears of persecution and torture” ought to he be deported to Uganda.
“Respondents are in search of to take away Petitioner to Uganda — a course of which they know will set off prolonged authorized proceedings — fairly than Costa Rica — the nation for elimination designated by Petitioner that supplied him resettlement — so as to punish him for his constitutionally protected exercise,” the attorneys stated within the submitting.
The attorneys allege the federal government is in search of to deport Abrego Garcia to Uganda as a substitute of Costa Rica for “refusing to plead responsible in his felony proceedings” in Tennessee.
“In so doing, Respondents know and intend for Petitioner to be detained by ICE for a prolonged time frame, despite the fact that a elimination to Costa Rica could possibly be effectuated with little or no ICE detention in any respect, and Respondents search to make use of ICE detention to punish Petitioner,” the submitting states.
The lawsuit, which was filed within the U.S. District Courtroom for the District of Maryland shortly after Abrego Garcia was detained by ICE, requests that the court docket block the federal government from detaining Abrego Garcia “greater than 200 miles” from the courthouse in Baltimore.
The attorneys are additionally asking the court docket to dam the federal government from eradicating Abrego Garcia to Uganda with out first trying to take away him to Costa Rica.
Additionally they ask the court docket to order the federal government to permit Abrego Garcia to have a “cheap concern” interview earlier than their consumer is deported to Uganda.
