US judges stop ice from removing Abrego Garcia immediately
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Maryland Green Belt – A federal judge has prevented the Trump administration from immediately deporting Salvador immigrants, which are at the heart of the legal and political maelstrom.
US District Judge Paula Sinis issued a temporary restraining order on Wednesday, barring the Trump administration from gaining ice custody for 72 hours after being released from federal custody in Nashville, Tennessee.
Xinis said earlier this month that she will soon take action in anticipation of Abrego Garcia’s looming detention hearing in his criminal case. She said she planned to issue orders this time to third countries such as Mexico and South Sudan in time enough time to block the Trump administration’s stated plan to immediately begin the process of deporting Abrego Garcia again.
Xinis’ order said additional time would ensure that Abrego would cause a reliable fear of removal into third countries. She also ordered the government to provide the government with an “immediate written notice” of the plan to carry him again to a third country in a 72-hour notice period so that Abrego Garcia could claim credible horror claims and seek other relief available to him under the law and the Constitution.
Protesters gathered outside the US District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, to protest the Trump administration’s deportation of Kilmer Abrego Garcia in March on July 7, 2025, when administrative authorities sent to El Salvador in March to be administrative errors. (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital)
Sinis’ order was handed over just three minutes before a Nashville judge (US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw) issued another order Wednesday, saying Abrego should be released from criminal custody until the date of his trial in January. Judge Crenshaw said in his order that the government “provided no evidence that there was anything in the history of Abrego, detained.”
The plan Xinis confirmed during the course of a few days of evidence hearing earlier this month concludes a 19-week legal story for Abrego Garcia, which spans two continents and multiple federal courts, including the Supreme Court.
Still, in the end, it didn’t get in the way of the new answer, and Xinis compared the process to “nail Jell-O to the wall” and “slap a horse that died of frustration.”
“We operate as a legal government,” she scolded lawyers for the Trump administration in one of many brief exchanges. “We are not operating as a government that says, ‘Take my word for it.’ ”
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Anyone referring to El Salvador’s CECOT prison at a demonstration against President Donald Trump and his immigration policy in Houston, Texas, on May 1, 2025, was published on May 1, 2025. (AFP via Getty)
Xinis repeatedly came up with the concept of temporary restraining orders or TROs to ensure that certain safeguards are in place to maintain Abrego Garcia. Ice custodyand appeared to agree with his lawyer that such an order was necessary to prevent the client from being removed again without access to the lawyer or without the opportunity to sue his country’s removal.
“I’m just trying to understand what you’re trying to do,” Xinis said on multiple occasions, visibly annoyed.
“I am deeply concerned that if you don’t have restraints, Abrego will be on another plane to another country,” she told the Justice Department.
These concerns were echoed by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers in court last week.
They noted the time when Sinis attempted to confirm Abrego Garcia’s position in El Salvador, and that the Trump administration appears to have under or misrepresented it before the courts the past few months ago, and that even as the Trump administration tried to comply with the court orders he was repatriated, he confirmed his position.
The Trump administration, which has repeatedly said that the case is not in her jurisdiction, will almost certainly move to appeal the restraining order to the High Court.
Protesters gather cheers and chan slogans during the nationwide “Give me!” I will protest Trump in Boston, Massachusetts on April 5, 2025. (Joseph Presioso via Getty / AFP)
The order follows an extraordinary several days of evidence hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, where Sinis spredded to Trump administration officials who understood what they said and tried to confirm their next steps as they tried to drive Abrego Garcia out of third country on Wednesday, July 16th.
She said she plans to issue an order before the court date when Abrego could be released by U.S. Magistrate Judge Waverly Crenshaw.
Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia’s lawyer I asked the court for more time Quoting many countries in ice detention he may suffer persecution, and concerns about what legal status he holds in the removal of third countries.
Without Mexico’s legal status, he said it would likely be a “quick path” to being deported to El Salvador by the national government in violation of tax withholding of the removal order.
And in South Sudan, another country’s DHS apparently is being considered, Abrego’s lawyers pointed out that the State Department currently has a Level 4 recommendation to discourage US travel due to violence and armed conflict.
Americans traveling there should “draft their will” in advance and should designate insurance beneficiaries. Official Guidance On the site.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer will speak to a reporter outside the US District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland in July. (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital) (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital)
In court, Xinis struggled at times to keep her own frustration and her distrust at bay after coming out with a Justice Department lawyer for months.
Sinis has been the main side of Abrego Garcia’s civil lawsuit since March when he was deported to El Salvador in violation of an existing court order that Trump administration officials described as “administrative errors.”
She spent hours with Justice Department officials in the course of three separate hearings on details of the government’s plans to move Abrego Garcia to a third country.
Cinis on Friday denounced the Justice Department for presenting a DHS witness sworn in his vow to deport Abrego Garcia a day ago, with official Thomas Giles saying he “knowing nothing” about his case and made no effort to confirm the answer despite his rank as ICE’s third highest enforcement officer.
The four-hour testimony he provided was “pretty great” and “shaming her intelligence,” Sinis said.
Ultimately, the court will not grant Abrego Garcia’s “free release” from federal custody in Tennessee on Wednesday, pending release from federal custody in Tennessee without maintaining ice custody.
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This shows the US Senate Judiciary Committee’s Paula Xinis from the video from July 22, 2015 (US Senate Judiciary Committee)
The Justice Department refused consent after a short break and urged Sinis to proceed with the TRO plan.
Xinis told the court that ultimately it remains between where they ended things in court and what she feels comfortable considering the past government actions.
This was clear when Sinis told Trump administration lawyers on Friday that she either “not buying” their arguments or “doesn’t have faith” in the statement they made, reflecting erosion of trust that could be damaging in the long term.
This week’s hearing concluded the months before and after between Xinis and the Trump administration, as they tried to track the status of a single immigrant who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration for 17 weeks.
Xinis previously described the government submission as “ambiguous, avoidant and incomplete,” targeting what she deemed to be a lack of information filed in court as part of the swift discovery process she ordered this year.
On Friday, she reflected this view. “You, in my view, took an estimate of regularity and destroyed it,” Xinis said.