Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia filed a lawsuit in federal court on Monday in an effort to block the Trump administration from deporting the accused MS-13 gang member and human smuggler to Uganda.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Abrego Garcia earlier Monday at its Baltimore field office, beginning a new round of deportation proceedings against the migrant whose earlier removal to El Salvador made him a symbol of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed a new habeas corpus petition that was assigned to U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, according to WUSA9. It was Xinis who ruled in April that the Trump administration needed to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador after he was deported there.
Abrego Garcia attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said the new lawsuit challenges his “current confinement and … his deportation to Uganda or to any other country unless and until he’s had a full trial in an immigration court as well as his full appeal rights.”
“That’s what we are going to be asking the district court to ensure, that he is not put on any flight to any country whatsoever, whether it’s Uganda, South Sudan, what have you,” the attorney said, Politico reported.
Abrego Garcia, 30, was released from custody in Tennessee on Friday after more than five months of detention, during which he was awaiting trial on the human smuggling charges.
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