The choose overseeing the deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia canceled a listening to within the case that had been scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
Abrego Garcia, who was returned to the U.S. after being mistakenly deported to a Salvadoran mega-prison, was set to return to federal court docket in Maryland Tuesday to proceed preventing his deportation case.
The Salvadoran native, who had been residing in Maryland together with his spouse and kids, was deported in March 2025 to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison regardless of a 2019 court docket order barring his deportation to that nation as a consequence of a worry of persecution. The Trump administration carried out the elimination after claiming he was a member of the legal gang MS-13, which he denies.
After the Supreme Courtroom upheld a ruling that Abrego Garcia must be returned to the U.S., he was brought back final June to face human smuggling costs in Tennessee, after which U.S. District Decide Paula Xinis launched him from ICE custody whereas he awaited trial. In Could, a federal choose dismissed the criminal indictment towards him, discovering that the federal government’s investigation had been tainted “with a vindictive motive.”
In court docket filings, the Trump administration has continued to push for Abrego Garcia’s deportation to a 3rd nation. Authorities officers have beforehand named Eswatini, Liberia, and Uganda as potential locations for elimination.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia arrives on the federal courthouse, Feb. 26, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV/AP
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys mentioned Costa Rica is his most well-liked designation if deported. Officers for the Central American nation beforehand advised ABC Information the nation would supply the Salvadoran refugee standing and potential residency.
“What’s unconstitutional is the Authorities’s insistence on punitively eradicating him to an African nation — to which he has no connection and has asserted a worry of persecution or torture, together with by future refoulement — as an alternative of the nation which he validly designated, Costa Rica, in retaliation for exercising his constitutional and statutory rights,” his legal professionals mentioned in a July court docket submitting.
