CNN
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The Trump administration plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a “third country” eventually, meaning not El Salvador, where he is from and was mistakenly sent back to earlier this year.
The Department of Homeland Security will initiate removal proceedings after Abrego Garcia returns to the agency’s immigration custody, a Justice Department lawyer said during a brief court hearing Thursday. While the custody transfer could come within days, the attorney said DHS had not communicated a timeline for the deportation.
“So, it can happen in 30 seconds or 30 days or 30 months?” Judge Paula Xinis of the federal District Court in Maryland asked at the hearing.
“There are no imminent plans to remove him to a third country,” DOJ lawyer Jonathan Guynn responded.
“And that’s as good as you can do?” Xinis added.
The disclosure arose in the hearing when Xinis declined at this time to stop the Trump administration from hastily deporting Abrego Garcia again in the coming week, even while he faces criminal charges.
The undocumented immigrant still appears to be in limbo on what’s next for him – and the Trump Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department now may be at odds.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers fear he may be sent to an unspecified country that isn’t El Salvador in the coming days, once he is released from criminal custody, which could happen as soon as Friday.
While the Trump administration’s deportation of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador violated a 2019 order from an immigration judge that said he could not be deported to his home country due to fears that he would face gang violence, the order does not preclude his deportation to another country.
His attorneys asked Xinis for help making sure Abrego Garcia stays in the country, because the Maryland-based judge was handling a civil challenge related to his recent El Salvador deportation. She will not be set to rule, however, until July 7 at the earliest.
The judge said Thursday she is unsure if she has the power to block his deportation again or bring him from Tennessee to Maryland.
Abrego Garcia is currently in pre-trial detention in Tennessee, under the control of a court there, but soon will be released from that court’s authority and turned over to DHS, according to the legal proceedings.
The Trump administration has said it plans to continue to hold Abrego Garcia in immigration detention, under DHS.
“If DHS were to then turn around and frustrate Mr. Abrego’s prosecution while those very charges are pending by removing him from the United States, that would mean the Executive Branch has no confidence in this trumped up case,” his lawyers wrote in another court filing on Thursday.
In Tennessee’s federal court, he has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges of human smuggling.
Following the hearing, a Justice Department spokesman said federal prosecutors intend to try Abrego Garcia in the US on the charges before he is deported.
“This defendant has been charged with horrific crimes including trafficking children and will not walk free in our country again,” Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin said.
The White House has also publicly reiterated it wants the Justice Department to take Abrego Garcia to trial in the US, a process that could take several months.
“Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States to face trial for the egregious charges against him. He will face the full force of the American justice system – including serving time in American prison for the crimes he’s committed,” deputy White House press secretary Abigail Jackson wrote on X.
The Justice Department hasn’t fully explained to any court how it responds to the concerns of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers that he could be deported once moved to immigration custody. The department is set to provide more information to the judges in Tennessee and Maryland in the coming days.
This story has been updated with additional details.
