Kilmar Abrego Garcia Out Of Jail, Not Out On Bail, And That's The Way It Goes!
Pissed off judge is PIIIIISSSSSED.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released from an immigration detention center in Maryland Thursday after a federal judge ordered ICE to let him go “immediately.” But the administration is already trying to get around the order granting Abrego Garcia’s habeas corpus petition, although he was not detained at an ICE appearance this morning.
It’s really pretty fucking amazing how much effort, disinformation, and money the Trump administration is putting into trying to destroy this man. It’s damn near biblical or operatic, the dirty Job they’re trying to pull.
Les Miserable Bastards
Abrego Garcia, you’ll recall, is the Maryland man who in March of this year was “mistakenly” sent to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT torture prison despite an order that he not be sent to El Salvador. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered the administration to bring him back to the US for a hearing on his deportation, but the government ignored the order for months. Then in June he was returned, but only to face bogus human smuggling charges. After he was released to home confinement pending trial, ICE grabbed him again and has been trying to deport him to various countries in Africa, despite his willingness to be sent to Costa Rica and that country’s offer to take him. The administration refuses to send him there, since it wants him to suffer more for his crime of becoming a symbol of its cruelty and lawlessness.
In her order to release Abrego Garcia, US District Judge Paula Xinis also determined that the government has failed to even show that there’s a final order of removal against him, so for fuckssake he shouldn’t be held anymore. Let’s say that again since it’s kind of a big fucking deal: The government has been trying to deport him all this time even though there is no order for his deportation.
One could even say that the administration’s attempts to deport Abrego Garcia have been undocumented from the start. Or to use the Right’s preferred term, the would-be deporters are ILLEGALS.
“His removal cannot be considered reasonably foreseeable, imminent, or consistent with due process,” Xinis wrote, adding, “Since Abrego Garcia’s wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been re-detained, again without lawful authority.”
Despite the government’s admission that Abrego Garcia was wrongly sent to CECOT, it has since fired the lawyer who let that slip in court testimony. It has devoted endless energy to portraying Abrego Garcia as a monster, a member (or even a leader!!!!) of the MS-13 gang, despite any actual evidence. He has never been convicted of any crimes, but he glaringly showed Trump to be wrong, so he must be hounded forever, only without the amused commentary of an Ishmael to point and laugh at Trump’s Ahab-like derangement, to say nothing of hilarity between the sheets at the Spouter Inn.
The Purloined Removal Order
Abrego Garcia was arrested in 2019 while looking for work outside a Home Depot, and a cop made an unfounded allegation that his Chicago Bulls cap meant he had to be in MS-13. In that case, the immigration judge found instead that Abrego Garcia had a justified fear of being killed by gangs who’d threatened his family if he returned to El Salvador, and issued a “withholding of removal” to bar him from being deported there. The immigration judge noted at the time that Abrego Garcia had provided credible testimony to support a claim for asylum, but because he’d missed the one-year deadline for applying, the withholding of removal was the best alternative the judge could offer.
Here’s the thing: Despite the government’s constant insistence that the 2019 withholding of removal order shouldn’t count, so Abrego Garcia must be deported, Judge Xinis points out (page 19 and following) that there simply isn’t a final order of removal for him at all, and that the government has never presented one, going back to the 2019 case, and continuing through all the court proceedings since he was wrongly sent to El Salvador this year and then returned.
Yeah, that’s kind of a big thing for the government to be missing! Without a removal order, Xinis said, Abrego Garcia can’t be deported at all, and obviously he shouldn’t remain in detention while the government tries to find a country that’ll take him, either.
Worse — for the government — Xinis found that administration lawyers had kinda sorta completely bullshitted the court in their attempt to avoid sending Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, which in August offered to accept him as a refugee:
![text from the court order: 'Official correspondence dated August 21, 2025, from Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security Mario E. Zamora Cordero (“Zamora Cordero”), confirmed: [blockquote] The Government of Costa Rica intends to provide refugee status or residency to Mr. Abrego Garcia upon his transfer to Costa Rica. The Government of Costa Rica assures the Government of the United States of America that, consistent with that lawful immigration status and Costa Rican law, it does not intend to detain Mr. Abrego Garcia upon his arrival in Costa Rica. The Government of Costa Rica further assures the Government of the United States of America that it will not remove Mr. Abrego Garcia to any third country, including Mr. Abrego Garcia’s home country, without Mr. Abrego Garcia’s consent.' [end blockquote]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OLGs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8880e214-37ba-42e9-ab4c-d3e0b14f218b_683x312.jpeg "text from the court order: 'Official correspondence dated August 21, 2025, from Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security Mario E. Zamora Cordero (“Zamora Cordero”), confirmed: [blockquote] The Government of Costa Rica intends to provide refugee status or residency to Mr. Abrego Garcia upon his transfer to Costa Rica. The Government of Costa Rica assures the Government of the United States of America that, consistent with that lawful immigration status and Costa Rican law, it does not intend to detain Mr. Abrego Garcia upon his arrival in Costa Rica. The Government of Costa Rica further assures the Government of the United States of America that it will not remove Mr. Abrego Garcia to any third country, including Mr. Abrego Garcia’s home country, without Mr. Abrego Garcia’s consent.' [end blockquote]")
Franz Kafka Respectfully Requests You Keep His Name Out Of This Clusterfuck
Costa Rica’s promises to not jail Abrego Garcia or to re-deport him to a third (fourth?) country clearly didn’t make him suffer enough for embarrassing Trump, so the federal fuckery only intensified. Before Abrego Garcia was released from jail in Tennessee pending trial, the government upped the pressure, telling him he could be deported to Costa Rica, but only if he agreed to plead guilty to the human smuggling charges. If he didn’t, they would instead deport him to freaking Uganda. He and his attorneys responded that he feared torture if he were sent there, and repeated his willingness to be removed to Costa Rica.
He appeared at the ICE office in Baltimore as ordered, and was arrested again. DHS then started a stupid game of notifying him he’d be sent instead anywhere but Costa Rica.
"Respondents serially 'notified' Abrego Garcia -- while he sat in ICE custody -- of his expulsion to Uganda, then Eswatini, then Ghana; but none of these countries were ever viable options, and at least two had not even been asked to take Abrego Garcia before Respondents claimed supposed removal to each.”
Finally, the government said it was definitely going to deport him to Liberia, and flat out lied to Judge Xinis, insisting in a filing that Costa Rica had withdrawn its offer and “does not wish to receive him,” so Liberia was the only option. Why no, the government didn’t include any communications from Costa Rica to show the offer had been withdrawn. The government didn’t offer any such evidence at a November 20 hearing, either, as the Washington Post reports (gift link).
Xinis noted during the hearing that the government had failed to provide any evidence of Costa Rica’s reversal — no diplomatic note, no letter, no witness with direct knowledge.
“You have not shown me the work here. Okay?” Xinis told Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign. “Can you just show me, just me, the underlying work on that?”
Ensign did not have an explanation, stating, “Your Honor, I would have to talk to the clients about that. I don’t — I don’t know the answer to that.”
“It’s so odd to me,” Xinis replied. “It’s so odd.”
It was so odd, in fact, that it wasn’t even true. As Xinis wrote,
Respondents’ calculated effort to take Costa Rica “off the table” backfired. Within 24 hours, Costa Rica, through Minister Zamora Cordero, communicated to multiple news sources that its offer to grant Abrego Garcia residence and refugee status is, and always has been, firm, unwavering, and unconditional.
So yeah, the government’s lawyers straight up lied to the judge, although she used a more polite phrasing — “Respondents did not just stonewall. They affirmatively misled the tribunal” — which amounts to the same thing. We’ll probably have to wait and see whether a contempt case grows out of that.
Despite Xinis’s unfailingly judicious pantsing of the administration’s credibility, DHS Propaganda Minister Tricia McLaughlin was quick to lie yesterday that no, it was Judge Xinis who was acting unlawfully. In a statement (on Twitter, where real governing is done now), McLaughlin whined, “This is naked judicial activism by an Obama appointed judge. This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”
‘Scrivener’s Error’? We’re Dragging Melville In, Too?
And lo, the administration did indeed go to court, sort of, rustling up an immigration judge — DOJ now calls them “deportation judges” so there’ll be no doubt whose side they’re on. As Abrego Garcia’s attorneys explained in an emergency motion last night, tje administration promptly issued a document claiming to be a final order of removal, framed as a “Sua Sponte Order Correcting Scrivener’s Error.”
Let’s explain that, although I would prefer not to. The government argued that the lack of any removal order in the 2019 case was no big deal, claiming that the 2019 order withholding removal implied the existence of an order of removal. As Xinis discussed at length in her order yesterday, an assload of case law makes clear that if there’s no removal order, you can’t fucking deport someone, period.
Well if that’s all, the administration claimed, let’s just fix that with a late-night “correction” to that itty bitty oversight in 2019, ‘kay? The document duly added what we assume was a hastily scribbled (in crayon) fix stating that, oh yeah, dude is ordered deported to El Salvador, but his request for withholding removal is also granted, so there’s the order of removal, added by time machine, OK?
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued that the attempted revision was yet another attempt to pull an end run around his due process rights, without even any notification to Abrego Garcia or his legal team (you fuckers), pointing out that “The Government had six years to identify and correct any alleged ‘scrivener’s error,’ and Petitioner has repeatedly pointed out the lack of an Order throughout these proceedings.” (Again, “You fuckers” is implied.)
Judge Xinis wasted little time granting the emergency request, writing that no, the government isn’t allowed to pretend that it can go back in time and insert a removal order retroactively, and then pretend that the order has been in effect since 2019.
In particular, she called attention to the absurdity of DHS’s summons telling Abrego Garcia to report to the ICE office in Baltimore, since it claims he
was “ordered removed” on 2 October 10, 2019, despite no such order having issued on that date. Instead, the ICE Order of Supervision seems to rely on an “order” issued last night from Immigration Judge (“IJ”) Phillip Taylor.
Get out of here with that crap, she ordered in more polite terms, adding that ICE isn’t allowed to arrest Abrego Garcia or deport him on the basis of the imaginary order. And for that matter, if they’re going to pretend the retroactive “order” went back in time, then the October 2019 “order’s” 90-day window to actually deport him also expired six years ago (you fuckers).
Instead, she barred the fuckers from detaining him and ordered the fuckers to file a response by midnight on December 14, get out of here (you fuckers).
It would appear that did the trick, since Abrego Garcia showed up for his check-in at the Baltimore ICE office and was allowed to go home, Hooray for now.
We’ll keep you updated on whatever happens next, which is likely to be so surreal that we’ll have to refer to the works of Jorge Luis Borges and/or Philip K Dick.
[NBC News / Opinion in Abrego Garcia v. Noem, December 11, 2025 / WaPo (gift link)]
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Is "FUCK OFF, REPUBLICAN FASCISTS" becoming the new trend?
I can imagine Dok literally cracking his knuckles and dusting off his literary chops this morning.