Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, back in the United States after the Trump administration mistakenly deported him to a Salvadoran prison, is on the verge of being released from jail as he awaits a criminal trial in Tennessee — but now ICE is planning to deport him yet again.
Except this time, federal immigration officials are preparing to send him to an unidentified “third country,” a continuation of the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to divert undocumented immigrants to Libya, South Sudan and other nations around the globe where they have no personal connection.
A Justice Department lawyer revealed new details about the administration’s intentions in federal court Thursday afternoon when facing questions from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who has spent months demanding the government return Abrego Garcia and explain how and why it deported him in the first place.
After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed that Abrego Garcia would “never return” to the U.S., he was brought back to the United States to face criminal charges in Tennessee. That belated prosecution was deemed by legal commentator Elie Honig as “post hoc sanitization efforts” to justify his erroneous deportation and subsequent vilification by the White House. The indictment was immediately followed by the abrupt resignation of the criminal division chief of that U.S. attorney’s office.
But now that the magistrate and district judge in Tennessee have issued rulings indicating that Abrego Garcia could be released pending trial, Xinis, who presides in Maryland, wanted to explore whether Abrego Garcia could be brought closer to home.
“Our plan is that he will be taken into ICE custody and removal proceedings will be initiated,” Jonathan Guynn, a deputy assistant attorney general at the DOJ’s civil division, told the court on Thursday.
“To El Salvador or a third country?” Xinis asked.
“To a third country is my understanding,” he responded.
But when the DOJ lawyer clarified that “there’s no timeline for these specific proceedings,” Xinis pressed further.
“So it can happen in 30 seconds or 30 days or 30 months?” she asked, elaborating that the timeline could affect how quickly she intends to step in.
Gwynn stated that “there are no imminent plans to remove him to a third country,” but he also didn’t push back when Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said they were concerned that the U.S. Marshals Service could release him from Tennessee on Friday — and have ICE whisk him away over the weekend.
Abrego Garcia’s plight is a microcosm of the political maelstrom facing the nation since the start of the Trump administration: increasingly aggressive immigration raids, federal law enforcement’s use of unreliable information to target undocumented migrants, their detainment at a Central American prison accused of torture, Congress’ attempts to step in, and the DOJ’s defiance of judicial orders mandating their return or status updates.
And while hundreds of lawsuits are currently challenging the Trump administration’s policies, the latest twist once again shows how his case is in some ways leading the fray. The federal government’s disclosure that it plans to forcefully remove Abrego Garcia from the United States comes just three days after the Supreme Court without explanation lifted a lower court’s restriction on so-called “third country removals” — over objections from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote in her dissent that “thousands will suffer violence in far flung locales.”
It’s unclear where ICE plans to exile Abrego Garcia. However, the Trump administration has created something of a short list that was reviewed in the Supreme Court’s recent decision. Sotomayor noted that the White House’s consideration of sending people to war-torn Libya prompted opposing factions to engage in gunfights in the streets. She also pointed out that South Sudan, another candidate, is “a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical personnel.”
And in the case of an unidentified gay man from Guatemala who feared being persecuted there, an immigration judge acknowledged his concerns and blocked him from being transported back home, so the Trump administration instead sent him to Mexico, which promptly sent him back to Guatemala, where he’s now in hiding.
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.