A federal judge ordered the government to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal immigrant at the center of a major deportation and criminal legal battle, from pre-trial detention, though he gave the Justice Department more time to argue over the conditions of release.
Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. rejected the Trump administration’s arguments for keeping Mr. Abrego Garcia in criminal custody pending his trial on migrant smuggling charges.
But the judge said he expects the government will still try to hold Mr. Abrego Garcia in immigration detention, so he won’t be released into the community.
“Underlying this case is an obvious truism that must not be forgotten: the Executive Branch is in control of where defendant Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia (Abrego) awaits trial in this case,” the judge wrote in his release order.
He largely backed up a ruling by a magistrate judge that also found the Justice Department didn’t make the case that the crimes Mr. Abrego Garcia is accused of demanded pre-trial detention.
The government has suggested that if it can’t hold Mr. Abrego Garcia in pretrial detention and has to resort to immigration detention, it may end up deporting him rather than have him stand trial on the criminal charge.
But Judge Crenshaw said that’s not an issue that, under the law, would affect the court’s detention decisions.
“At bottom, the government asks the court to save it from itself because it may suffer irreparable harm completely of its own making,” the judge said.
He also said the government’s arguments that Mr. Abrego Garcia has ties to the MS-13 gang are “at best circumstantial.”
The government’s reason for deporting Mr. Abrego Garcia in March in the first place was an allegation that he was an MS-13 member — a finding sustained by an immigration judge in 2019.
Judge Crenshaw also said two protection orders previously sought by his wife and the allegations of a fight with a co-conspirator, likewise, don’t demand he be detained.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.