Judge Signals She Is Likely to Order Abrego Garcia’s Release Soon

A federal judge on Friday expressed strong doubt that the Trump administration had legal authority to continue detaining Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man now in immigration custody after Trump officials wrongfully deported him and then brought him back.

Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court in Maryland had called the hearing to give the Trump administration a chance to demonstrate evidence of lawful plans to deport Mr. Abrego Garcia soon, without which she said she was inclined to release him. But instead, she said, the government seems to be switching arguments at will to try to lengthen his detainment, resulting in a “totally inconsistent” case.

“You’re not even close,” the judge told administration lawyers at one point during the six-hour session. “We’re getting to ‘three strikes and you’re out.’”

If Judge Xinis orders Mr. Abrego Garcia released, it would be his first time walking free since he was briefly released for three days in August, after two judges ruled against Mr. Abrego Garcia’s continued detention for criminal charges the administration is separately pursuing against him. The release would also amount to the latest judicial rebuke of the Trump administration in a long and twisting case that began with what officials admitted was an “administrative error” that led to Mr. Abrego Garcia’s detention in a Salvadoran prison.

The administration has vowed that Mr. Abrego Garcia would “never go free on American soil.”

Central to the argument on Friday was whether administration officials had found a country where to take Mr. Abrego Garcia, who has been barred from deportation to his native El Salvador because he fears his life would be in danger there.

The Trump administration had previously floated Uganda and Eswatini as the primary options. But the government’s key witness, John Schultz, a deputy assistant director overseeing deportation operations at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said no African countries to which the government intended to deport Mr. Abrego Garcia had agreed to take him.