BALTIMORE — A federal judge in Maryland has extended an order barring ICE from rearresting Kilmar Abrego-Garcia.
On December 11, 2025, District Judge Paula Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, granted Garcia's Habeas Corpus petition claiming unlawful detention.
Xinis found that Garcia was never issued a final order of removal to his native country of El Salvador. The government claimed otherwise, stating that Garcia did have deportation orders.
To justify her initial decision, Xinis cited due process laws giving the U.S. Attorney General 90 days to deport a undocumented migrant, or else risk releasing them from custody.
Since Xinis continued insisting that Garcia was never issued a deportation order to begin with, she ordered his release.
Just hours after Xinis ruled, Immigration Judge Phillip Taylor corrected the error for which the government originally raised regarding Garcia's deportation case.
Taylor's revised order clarifies that Garcia was ordered deported back in October of 2019.
With that, the government argued the 90 day clock for Garcia's deportation proceedings should restart considering Xinis made her decision based on the technicality.
Despite acknowledging that Garcia's defense team is no longer denying an existing deportation order, Xinis still refused the feds request to take him back into custody.
"First, since late 2019, Respondents made no effort to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country," Xinis reasons in her latest order. "They have also held him in some form of detention since March 2025 until this Court ordered his release, which even excepting the time spent in federal criminal custody, amounts to the presumptive six months of detention accorded to Respondents."
Xinis also accuses the feds of presenting no evidence of immediate plans to deport Garcia.
The feds have long painted Abrego-Garcia as a wife beating, MS-13 gang member, involved in human trafficking.
Garcia has denied all allegations. He still faces federal trafficking charges in Tennessee.
The subject of holding undocumented migrants in custody indefinitely pending their deportation has become the center of thousands of Habeas cases around the nation.
While a majority of district level judges have ruled against the Trump Administration's position of indefinite detention, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently sided with the President's policy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit is set to hear similar arguments on February 19.
