Trump admin asks judge to dissolve injunction blocking Abrego Garcia deportation
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday urged a judge to lift an injunction preventing the Trump administration from re-arresting Kilmar Abrego Garcia so he could be quickly deported to Liberia.
“Termination is also warranted because the Court’s Memorandum Order does not recognize that the Court’s prior injunction against removal is the sole impediment to Petitioner’s immediate removal,” the Department of Justice said in a court filing obtained by Fox News Digital. he wrote. “The court cannot impose a bar that both delays deportation and therefore prolongs detention and at the same time finds that the resulting detention is impermissibly prolonged.”
The Court added: “Any attempt by this Court to permanently enjoin the government from exercising its authority to remove Petitioner from this country is directly contrary to established judicial norms and is a clear error of law.”
The administration deported Abrego Garcia, who they alleged was an MS-13 member, to a prison in his native El Salvador a year ago, but despite initially saying the administration had no authority to bring him back, Garcia was sent back to the U.S. in June to face human trafficking charges in Tennessee related to a 2022 traffic stop.
His lawyers deny that he is a member of MS-13.
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia appeared in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in December. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
He was released from custody in December on the grounds that the Trump administration had not received the final deportation order required to deport him to a third country.
Abrego Garcia, 31, has been a flashpoint in the national immigration debate since last March, when he was deported to El Salvador in violation of a 2019 court order that Trump administration officials deemed an “administrative error.”
The Supreme Court later ruled that the administration should work to bring him back to the United States.
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He has pleaded not guilty to human trafficking charges and is seeking to have the charges dismissed on the grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution.
The 2019 court order blocks Abrego Garcia from being deported to El Salvador after an immigration judge determined Garcia was in danger of a gang threat that threatened his family. He immigrated to the United States illegally in his youth and was under the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A protester holds a poster of Kilmar Abrego Garcia outside the U.S. District Court in Nashville, Tenn. (Getty Images)
Last month, U.S. District Judge Paula
He said the Trump administration had not given the court “good reason to believe” that they planned to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country “in the reasonably foreseeable future.” Instead, he said, “they made one empty threat after another to send him to countries in Africa where he had no real chance of success.”
Abrego Garcia said he was willing to be sent to Costa Rica, but Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons said he would be sent to Liberia instead.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer said in December that Abrego wanted to go to Costa Rica immediately and that the country granted him asylum status months ago.
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia walked into the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Baltimore, MD. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The government’s “persistent refusal to consider Costa Rica as a viable deportation option, its threats to deport Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him in, and its misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia was now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever the purpose behind his detention, it was not the ‘primary purpose’ of timely deportation from a third country,” Xinis said in a December statement. he said.
The administration asked the judge to decide on the request to lift the precautionary measure by April 17.
Fox News Michael Sinkewicz, Louis Casiano, Breanne Deppisch and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.
