Today a federal court rejected the “let’s just ignore the last year” theory advanced by the government in the saga of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Abrego Garcia is, of course, the man the Trump administration famously and wrongly deported to an El Salvadoran slave labor camp and then spent the better part of a year trying to punish for embarrassing them by surviving.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled that Abrego Garcia cannot be detained again by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, because the statutory 90-day removal period that would allow ICE to hold him expired “long ago.”
Although all parties agreed to a retroactive correction of the immigration record, Judge Xinis made clear that paperwork time travel doesn’t revive expired detention authority. “The ‘removal period’ for which Abrego Garcia’s detention had been compelled was over long ago,” she wrote.
“Respondents’ reading would also conveniently erase this last year of Abrego Garcia’s Detention,” she wrote, adding that the Trump administration “cannot alter substantive rights or rewrite history.”
Since August 2025, ICE has floated what Judge Xinis described as “phantom removals to three (maybe four) African countries,” that were “empty threats” with “no real chance of success.”
Meanwhile, the one country that has consistently offered to accept Abrego Garcia and that he is willing to go to (Costa Rica), has been deliberately ignored. Which tells you the Trump administration’s dogged pursuit of Abrego Garcia is not about removal, but about the vindictive, cruel desire to make an example of him.
“In her decision today, she recognized that if the government were truly trying to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the United States, they would have sent him to Costa Rica long before today,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Abrego Garica said. “We hope the government does not appeal this order, and instead finally comes to the table in good faith to work out the details of a removal plan to Costa Rica.”
That hope may be optimistic. But Judge Xinis has now made it very clear that the government doesn’t get to keep a man in legal limbo forever just to save face.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
The post Trump Administration Learns To Its Dismay It ‘Cannot Alter Substantive Rights’ appeared first on Above the Law.
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