Returned deportee Abrego to be released without bail, but faces U.S. immigration custody
FILE PHOTO: Supporters gather for the arraignment and detention hearing for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man wrongly deported from Maryland to El Salvador before being returned to the United States on migrant smuggling charges, in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S., June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Seth Herald/File photo
By Luc Cohen
A U.S. judge said on Wednesday she would order the release of Kilmar Abrego, the migrant wrongly deported to El Salvador by President Donald Trump's administration only to be returned to the United States to face criminal charges, from pre-trial custody without posting bail but acknowledged he likely would be taken into immigration custody.
Abrego wore an orange jail-issued t-shirt and a headset to listen to a Spanish interpreter translate the proceedings in the Nashville courtroom of U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes.
The judge ruled on Sunday that the administration could not continue to detain Abrego, 29, pending trial on two charges accusing him of conspiring with at least five other members of a smuggling ring to bring migrants to the United States illegally.
Abrego, a Salvadoran national who had been living in Maryland, has pleaded not guilty.
At Wednesday's hearing, Holmes said Abrego would also be required to seek employment while released, and limit his travel to the Nashville area and Maryland.
The judge acknowledged, though, that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, was seeking to detain him for possible deportation, and that he would likely be placed into custody.
"If Mr. Abrego is released from ICE custody for any reason, he is subject to these conditions immediately and expected to comply," Holmes said.
Abrego was deported to El Salvador despite a 2019 judicial order barring such a move on the grounds that he could face persecution by gangs in his home country. The Trump administration has not indicated the country to which they may now seek to deport him.
Abrego's case has become emblematic of the Republican president's aggressive immigration crackdown and the pushback from rights groups.
His lawyers have called the charges an effort by the administration to justify its violation of Abrego's rights by wrongly deporting him. Holmes scheduled Wednesday's hearing after expressing skepticism toward the administration's allegations against Abrego including the credibility of cooperating witnesses.
The judge's finding that the government had not shown that Abrego was dangerous amounted to a rebuke of Trump's assertion that Abrego is a "bad guy" with a "horrible past."
"The court will give Abrego the due process that he is guaranteed," Holmes wrote.
Abrego's wife, their young son, and her two children from another relationship are U.S. citizens and live in Maryland. He was deported on March 15 and was returned on June 6.
U.S. officials had called his deportation an "administrative error" but initially said they would not bring him back. That raised concerns among Trump's critics that his administration was disregarding civil liberties and due process in its push to step up deportations.
In a separate civil case, another judge is investigating whether administration officials violated her order, later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, to facilitate Abrego's return to the United States.
The Justice Department ultimately brought Abrego back to face an indictment returned by a grand jury in Nashville charging him with plotting to bring migrants to the United States illegally and then transporting them from the U.S.-Mexico border to destinations in the country.
According to the indictment, Abrego often picked up migrants in Houston, and made more than 100 trips between Texas and Maryland between 2016 and 2025. In urging Holmes to detain Abrego, prosecutors alleged that he sometimes transported minors and often brought his own young children on the trips to serve as a cover story.
Holmes said she gave little weight to those assertions in part because they came from cooperating witnesses seeking reduced sentences in criminal cases or relief from deportation, including the leader of a human smuggling operation who has been deported five times and convicted of felonies twice.
"Each cooperating witness upon whose statements the government's argument for detention rests stands to gain something," the judge wrote.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
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