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Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura listen during a post-hearing briefing outside U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on December 22, 2025, in Greenbelt, Maryland.Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with The Trump administration is again trying to send the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the west African nation of Liberia and urging a federal judge to dismiss a bar on his removal, according to legal documents filed over the weekend.
Abrego Garcia, of Maryland, has agreed to be deported to Costa Rica, which will accept him as a refugee, and is fighting his removal to another third country. The Trump administration cannot remove him to his home country of El Salvador, after he was mistakenly deported there in 2025 and kept in a brutal Salvadoran prison. His erroneous deportation cast a national spotlight on the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.Lyons said Abrego Garcia did not designate Costa Rica as a third country of removal in 2019, when he was granted a withholding from removal to El Salvador. Lyons argues that Abrego Garcia therefore “forfeited his right to designate an additional country of removal when he failed to designate any other country prior to the completion of his removal proceedings.”Lyons said the second reason is the Trump administration has already invested in “high-stakes political negotiations” with Liberia’s government to accept Abrego Garcia and if the administration were to abandon “agreements negotiated at the highest levels of government could cast doubt on the diplomatic reliability of the United States in relation not only to the Republic of Liberia but also other nations with whom it negotiates on these and other matters.” Lyons said for those reasons, federal Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland should dissolve her injunction that prevents the Trump administration from removing Abrego Garcia. Third-country removals were somewhat rare until the second Trump administration, which is relying more on them as the president aims to carry out mass deportations. Kilmar Abrego’s situation dates back years. In 2019, when Abrego Garcia was granted the withholding of removal because a judge found he would face violence from gangs if removed to El Salvador, he had an agreement with ICE to check in yearly. In 2025, ICE agents stopped Abrego Garcia while he was picking his son up from day care and he was informed there was a change in his immigration status. He was placed on a deportation flight with hundreds of other men to the brutal Salvadoran mega-prison known as CECOT.The Trump administration is asking for Xinis to make her decision by April 17. Xinis was appointed by former President Barack Obama.Truthout relies on individual donations to publish independent journalism, free from political and corporate influence. In fact, we’re almost entirely funded by readers like you.At a moment when independent journalism is urgently needed, we are struggling to meet our operational costs due to increasing political censorship.We have 72 hours to hit our $24,000 goal.This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.Truthout must raise $24,000 to fund our operational costs this month. If you value free-to-read, nonprofit journalism, we appeal for your support — please make a one-time or monthly donation.
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