Greenbelt, Maryland– A federal judge on Monday will hear arguments on whether that is possible Kelmar Abrego Garcia You must then be returned to immigration custody To be free For a little over a week.
Abrego Garcia, who Incorrect migration Coming to El Salvador has become a lightning rod for both sides of the immigration debate, and he has been detained in immigration detention centers since August. At the time, the government said it planned to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana And recently, Liberia. However, officials made no effort to deport him to the only country he agreed to go to, Costa Rica. US District Judge Paula Shenis, in Maryland, even accused the government of misleading it by falsely claiming that Costa Rica was unwilling to receive him.
“The government’s continued refusal to recognize Costa Rica as a viable option for deportation, its threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that had never agreed to receive him, and its misrepresentation to the court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia all reflect that whatever the purpose behind his detention, it was not for the ‘primary purpose’ of being deported to a third country in a timely manner,” she wrote.
Shenis’s December 11 order releasing Abrego Garcia from immigration custody also concluded that the immigration judge who heard his case in 2019 failed to order his removal from the United States, and he cannot be removed anywhere without a removal order.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and two children He lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the United States illegally from El Salvador when he was a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation to his home country, after finding he faced danger there from a gang that targeted his family. In March, he was deported there by mistake anyway. US officials resisted calls to return him until the Supreme Court considered the matter. However, officials said he could not remain in the United States and vowed to deport him to the United States. Third country.
In filings last week, government lawyers argued that, with or without a final order of removal, they are still working to deport Abrego Garcia, so they can legally detain him during the process.
“If there is no final order of removal, the immigration proceedings will continue, and the petitioner will be subject to detention prior to the final order,” they wrote.
On the other hand, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers cited a US Supreme Court ruling that “because immigration proceedings are ‘civil rather than criminal’ detention must be ‘nonpunitive.'” They claimed that the detention in Abrego Garcia’s case is punitive because the government wants to be allowed to detain him indefinitely without a viable plan to deport him.
“If immigration detention does not serve the legitimate purpose of effecting reasonably foreseeable deportation, it is punitive, potentially indefinite, and unconstitutional,” they wrote.