Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who became a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to El Salvador, has been freed from an immigration detention facility in Pennsylvania.
Abrego Garcia, who was taken into custody in August, was released from detention on a judge’s orders.
He returned to his home in Beltsville, Maryland, a few hours later.
The 30-year-old was scheduled to check-in with officials at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Baltimore on Friday.
The agency freed him just before 5pm on Thursday following a court ruling by US District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland. She wrote federal authorities detained him after he returned to the US without any legal basis.
Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported and then returned to the US, is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years.
He entered the country illegally as a teenager to join his brother who had become a US citizen.
In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador, where he said he faced danger from a gang that targeted his family.
Though he was permitted to live and work in the US under ICE supervision, he was not handed residency status.
Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported and detained in a Salvadoran prison, despite having no criminal record.
Facing growing public pressure and a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the US in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
Abrego Garcia, who has applied for asylum in the US, has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked a federal judge there to dismiss them.
He was released from jail in Tennessee, but taken into custody again.
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The 2019 settlement found he had a “well-founded fear” of danger in El Salvador if he was deported. Instead, ICE has been looking to deport him to a series of African countries.
Abrego Garcia has sued, claiming the Trump administration is illegally using the removal process to punish him for the public humiliation caused by his deportation.
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In her order releasing Abrego Garcia, the judge wrote that federal authorities “did not just stonewall” the court, “they affirmatively misled the tribunal”.
The Department of Homeland Security strongly criticised the court order and vowed to lodge an appeal, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also told reporters the Trump administration would be appealing against the decision.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he was prepared to defend his client against further attempts to deport him.
He said the judge made it clear the government cannot detain someone indefinitely without legal authority and that his client “has endured more than anyone should ever have to”.
