After Wrongful Deportation to CECOT and a Supreme Court Order, DHS Now Wants to Send Abrego Garcia to Liberia
The government admitted sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador's maximum-security prison was an error. The Supreme Court ordered his return. Now DHS insists on deporting him to Liberia -- a country he has no connection to -- while simultaneously prosecuting him in Tennessee.
The Department of Homeland Security told a federal judge on April 7 that it still intends to deport Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to Liberia -- a country he has no connection to, has never visited, and where he knows no one -- despite a new agreement with Costa Rica to accept exactly this kind of deportee.
Judge Paula Xinis of the District of Maryland, who has been overseeing the case since 2025, responded to the Department of Justice's suggestion that Abrego Garcia could "remove himself" to Costa Rica by calling it a "fantasy." The reason: the same government pushing to deport him is also prosecuting him on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He cannot leave the country while facing a federal criminal case.
How He Got Here
Abrego Garcia, 30, is a Salvadoran national who has lived in Maryland for years with his American wife and child. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him withholding of removal -- a legal protection that specifically barred the government from deporting him to El Salvador, where he faced credible threats of gang violence.
On March 12, 2025, ICE agents detained him. Three days later, despite the standing order protecting him, they put him on a plane to El Salvador. He was imprisoned at CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center -- a maximum-security facility built by President Nayib Bukele to hold gang members. Abrego Garcia had never been charged with or convicted of a crime in either country.
The government called it an "administrative error."
The Supreme Court
Abrego Garcia's family sued. The case moved fast. On April 10, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the government must "facilitate" his release from El Salvador and return him to the status he would have had if he'd never been deported.
The government took nearly two months to comply. Abrego Garcia finally returned to the United States on June 6, 2025.
But instead of restoring the status quo the Supreme Court had ordered, the government changed strategy. It filed human smuggling charges against him in Tennessee -- charges he has pleaded not guilty to and moved to dismiss -- and began pushing to deport him to a series of African countries.
One Empty Threat After Another
In February 2026, Judge Xinis barred ICE from deporting or detaining Abrego Garcia, writing that the agency had presented "one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success."
The government asked her to rescind that order in March. In a memo, Todd Lyons, the acting head of ICE, wrote that deporting Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica -- which had agreed to accept him -- would be "prejudicial to the United States" because the government had invested "resources and political capital" negotiating with Liberia to accept third-country deportees.
The logic is revealing: the government's stated objection to the easier, agreed-upon option is that it would undermine the political investment in a harder, more contested one. The choice of Liberia is not about Abrego Garcia. It's about establishing a precedent for the broader third-country deportation program.
The Contradiction
The government is simultaneously:
- Prosecuting Abrego Garcia in Tennessee, which requires him to remain in the United States and appear in court
- Seeking to deport him to Liberia, which would require him to leave the United States
- Suggesting he could "remove himself" to Costa Rica, which a judge called impossible given point 1
At the April 7 hearing, DOJ attorney Ernesto Molina from the Office of Immigration Litigation advanced position 3. Judge Xinis rejected it directly.
What's Next
Xinis has set a briefing schedule with the Trump administration requesting a decision by April 17. The next hearing is April 28.
The case has broader implications beyond one man. The administration has pursued third-country deportation agreements with Liberia, Uganda, Honduras, Ecuador, and other nations. By April 2026, more than 13,000 migrants in the United States had been ordered deported to safe third countries. How Xinis rules -- and whether higher courts intervene -- will shape the legal boundaries of the entire program.