Kilmar Abrego out of detention but threat of deportation remains

A federal judge ordered Friday that U.S. immigration officials could not detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia, hours after his release from immigration detention.

Abrego Garcia was appearing Friday morning for a scheduled appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, some 14 hours after he was released from detention on a judge’s orders. His lawyers asked the judge to block authorities from detaining him again.

Officials cannot re-detain him until the court conducts a hearing on the motion for the temporary restraining order, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland said. She wrote that Abrego Garcia is likely to succeed on the merits of any further request for relief from ICE detention.

“For the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice, the Court’s narrowly crafted remedy cannot be so quickly and easily upended without further briefing and consideration,” she wrote.

Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He was last taken into custody during a similar check-in.

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

“I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”

He urged people to keep fighting.