Major Court Error Could Set Kilmar Abrego Garcia Free

A newly uncovered 2019 immigration court mistake and a damning revelation about the Trump administration’s deception

A major error in the federal government’s deportation proceedings against Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia has thrown the Trump administration’s case into disarray and may soon lead to his release. 

During the federal hearing last week, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis was hearing arguments after blocking Abrego Garcia’s deportation pending the resolution of the habeas case challenging his removal. The government has asked her to lift the injunction as a key witness and ICE official John Cantu testified supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s latest proposal to send Abrego Garcia to Liberia.

But a stunning discovery that could result in Abrego Garcia’s release. 

In 2019, immigration Judge David Jones denied Garcia’s request for asylum but granted him protection from deportation to El Salvador due to credible threats from gang members targeting his family’s pupusa business. His ruling, which was critical to the government’s current case, never formally ordered Garcia to leave the United States. 

“There is no order of removal in the docket, in the record,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said Thursday near the beginning of the four-hour hearing. “You can’t fake it ‘til you make it. You got to have it. … You have to have the order. It’s got to be an order memorialized somewhere and I don’t have it.”

Without that order, the legal foundation of the Trump administration’s case may collapse entirely, but the mistake is only one part of a broader and far more troubling pattern within this case.  

In court, government lawyers repeatedly insisted that Garcia’s preferred destination of Costa Rica, where he has family ties, “wasn’t an option” and was no longer willing to accept him. Yet those statements were directly contradicted this week by Costa Rica’s Minister of Security, Mario Zamora Cordero, who told ABC News: 

“Costa Rica’s offer to receive Mr. Abrego Garcia for humanitarian reasons remains in place,” Costa Rica’s minister of security, Mario Zamora, told ABC News in a statement. “My letter dated August 25, 2025, is the official position of the government.”

This revelation exposed a disturbing truth about the administration’s insistence on deporting Garcia to Liberia, which is not rooted in logistical necessity but instead appears to be a retaliatory impulse to inflict psychological and physical hardship on Garcia simply for defending his legal rights. 

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have argued the government has “cycled through” four third-country destinations, including Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and now Liberia, without providing “the notice, opportunity to be heard and individualized assessment that due process requires.”

Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, released a statement saying, “The government has lost all credibility in its denials that anything other than punishment is motivating its desperate insistence on sending my client to an African country, any African country.” 

The government’s credibility took an even heavier blow when Cantú was unable to answer basic questions about the administration’s communications with Costa Rica or the assurances obtained from Liberia. 

Cantu admitted that his knowledge about the case came entirely from a five-minute videoconference during which a State Department lawyer read him a prepared statement, resulting in Judge Xinis disregarding Cantu’s testimony for lacking knowledge not only about the process for Garcia but also the case. 

“The point has been made that this witness knows zero information about the content of the declaration,” Judge Xinis said. 

Drew Ensign, an attorney for the government, argued that Abrego Garcia’s order withholding removal to El Salvador would only exist if there was a final order of removal issued.

“There is a very strong argument for Mr. Abrego that third country removal is derivative of a valid removal order, and from the beginning, your former colleague agreed that there is no order of removal in the record,” Judge Xinis replied. 

The hearing also highlighted the Trump administration’s earlier misconduct with Garcia in March, after officials illegally deported him to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT mega-prison despite a court order barring his removal there, only reluctantly returning him to the U.S. after Judge Xinis intervened. 

Garcia’s attorneys now argue that the criminal case against him, and the subsequent push to deport him to remote African nations, is retaliation for embarrassing the administration in court.

“It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of retaliation, right? I can’t think of any reason why we’re still fighting out this case and why he’s still behind bars,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Ábrego García’s attorney, said. 

Judge Xinis has not yet ruled, but her August injunction barring Ábrego García’s removal from the U.S. remains in place.

If the judge ultimately orders his release, it will mark a decisive rebuke of that approach and an end to a vindictive campaign of government overreach that has pushed the limits of legal and moral accountability.

Judge Xinis said she would rule on whether he can be released as quickly as possible before adding that “These are weighty issues.”

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