The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed in a Friday court filing that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have identified Liberia as the latest destination where Kilmar Abrego Garcia will be deported. Additionally, the filing informed Obama-appointed District Court Judge Paula Xinis that the Trump administration has obtained diplomatic assurances regarding the African nation’s planned treatment of the alleged human smuggler.
While federal immigration authorities previously identified other African countries that ultimately declined to accept Abrego Garcia, including Uganda and Eswatini, the filing confirms that Liberia, “has agreed to accept petitioner.” The filing also notes that Abrego Garcia has not claimed to fear persecution or torture in Liberia.
“Liberia is a thriving democracy and one of the United States’s closest partners on the African continent,” the filing notes. “Since its founding more than two centuries ago by American émigrés, Liberia has maintained strong connections with the United States,” including naming its capital city Monrovia after President James Monroe, the fifth United States President.
It also notes that Liberia’s national language is English, that the nation protects human rights in a national constitution modeled on the United States’ own founding document, and that Liberian President Joseph Boakai recently signed an executive order enhancing protections for refugees.
Additionally, it revealed that the Trump administration,” received diplomatic assurances regarding the treatment of third-country individuals removed to Liberia from the United States,” before seeming to reveal the plan to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia is in its final stages.
The filing informed the court that federal immigration authorities, “are making the final necessary arrangements for Petitioner’s removal.”
Similar diplomatic assurances were previously obtained by the U.S. State Department from Costa Rica, where Abrego Garcia would have been removed under a plea deal he later rejected. His immigration lawyer has repeatedly suggested Abrego Garcia would consent to deportation to the Central American nation.
Xinis recently suggested she could decide to release Abrego Garcia from ICE custody, citing the failure by the agency to find a country willing to accept Abrego Garcia, who has successfully claimed that his 2019 final deportation order precludes his removal to his native El Salvador.
However, the judge also blocked the Trump administration from deporting Abrego Garcia in August, when she told the DOJ, “Your clients are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States,” until she issues her final ruling in his second immigration lawsuit against DHS.
Abrego Garcia was deported in March, but was returned to the United States in June, after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi unsealed the indictment accusing him of spending nearly a decade embroiled in a human smuggling ring.
The charges stem from the November 30, 2022, traffic stop of Abrego Garcia by the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP), which The Tennessee Star 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 showing troopers suspected human trafficking during the stop.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His case is scheduled to reach trial in January 2026.
– – –
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].
Background Photo “Liberia” by blk24ga. CC BY 3.0.
Judge Xinis can go along with him. One way.