In legal filings submitted on Thursday through his immigration attorneys, Kilmar Abrego Garcia urged Obama-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis to grant his release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after his latest legal setbacks.
The first of two filings responds to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys’ request to stay all deadlines in the case due to the government shutdown, which they wrote made it illegal for them to continue working on the case, with Abrego Garcia’s attorneys arguing the lapse in government funding, “cannot suspend habeas corpus proceedings.”
Instead of staying proceedings, the attorneys argued it should compel Xinis to release Abrego Garcia from federal custody, because, “the mere fact that the Government is seeking to extend all deadlines in this case indefinitely shows that there is no significant likelihood that Petitioner will be removed in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
This claim comes after Immigration Judge Philip P. Taylor, who was appointed under the first Trump administration, on Wednesday declined to reopen Abrego Garcia’s immigration case, in part because the government had not provided evidence it imminently sought to deport Abrego Garcia to Uganda or Eswatini, the landlocked African country where it said it intended to remove Abrego Garcia after he claimed to fear persecution or torture in Uganda.
Xinis has notably ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE not to deport Abrego Garcia until the conclusion of his newest civil lawsuit against the Trump administration, which seeks to prevent his deportation to Uganda, instead raising Costa Rica as his preferred destination for removal. Abrego Garcia has also claimed to fear persecution or torture once removed to his preferred destination.
The second filing submitted on behalf of Abrego Garcia claims that the lack of an imminent deportation plan warrants his release.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote that Taylor, “determined that there is insufficient evidence that the Department of Homeland Security ‘has presented [Petitioner] with a formal notice of removal or any other document showing its intent to remove him to Uganda, Eswatini, or any other third country,'” which they claim proves their client’s time in ICE custody, “is legally indefensible and has become detainment detached from a destination.”
The alleged human smuggler was originally returned to Tennessee in June, when U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi unsealed the indictment alleging he spent nearly a decade embroiled in a human smuggling ring.
After a federal magistrate judge in Tennessee granted Abrego Garcia pretrial release in August, he was ordered to appear at an ICE facility in Maryland, where he reentered federal custody.
The DOJ attorneys representing DHS in the immigration case have argued that Abrego Garcia’s continued detainment is justified under the precedent set in Zadvydas v. Davis in 2001, which determined that indefinite detention of illegal aliens with final orders of removal violates the constitutional right to due process, but allowed for a “reasonably necessary” period to account for removal.
This period has generally been defined as six months, but Abrego Garcia has argued that his period of confinement began in 2019, the year he was arrested while in the alleged company of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang members and ultimately issued a final order of deportation containing an ambiguous withholding of removal provision.
The criminal case against Abrego Garcia stems from the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) traffic stop of the vehicle he was driving in November 2022, which The Tennessee Star first reported in April. A spokesman for THP told The Star that Abrego Garcia was released at the instruction of the “Biden-era FBI,” despite a DHS document later revealing troopers suspected human trafficking.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the human smuggling charges, and his case is scheduled to reach trial in January 2026. He remains at an ICE facility in Pennsylvania.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
