Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia will remain in the United States through at least late November as federal courts in Maryland and Tennessee examine whether the Justice Department pursued criminal charges against him in retaliation for his prior legal challenges to deportation orders, according to new filings and court orders.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland, who blocked Abrego Garcia’s deportation in August, on Tuesday approved a new schedule that will allow him to participate in a two-day evidentiary hearing next week in Nashville, the Washington Examiner reported Wednesday.
That hearing, ordered by the federal court in Tennessee, will scrutinize whether prosecutors engaged in “selective” or “vindictive” prosecution stemming from a 2022 traffic stop.
Xinis also set a motion hearing before Thanksgiving to consider the government’s request to dissolve her injunction barring Abrego Garcia’s immediate removal from the United States.
In Tennessee, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw is weighing whether to compel Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and now the Justice Department’s second-in-command, to testify at next week’s hearing.
Abrego Garcia’s legal team says Blanche’s testimony is needed to establish who authorized the prosecution and why.
Crenshaw has ordered the Justice Department to produce internal communications tied to the charging decision, and he will review the documents privately before deciding what must be disclosed to the defense.
Abrego Garcia, 30, became a focal point in the Trump administration’s intensified immigration enforcement efforts after a 2022 traffic stop led to federal smuggling charges.
He has been fighting removal through both civil and criminal courts.
A grand jury returned two counts of immigrant smuggling in May, and if the case is not dismissed, a trial is scheduled to begin early next year.
Shortly after Abrego Garcia returned to the United States, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Blanche held a brief news conference announcing the Tennessee charges.
Justice Department lawyers told Xinis on Monday that the administration intends to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia as soon as Friday, Oct. 31, and would have already done so if not for her injunction.
It remains unclear what assurances, if any, Liberia has provided about his status or whether it has agreed not to send him to El Salvador, given a 2019 immigration order barring removal there.
Separately, Crenshaw on Monday reprimanded Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Bondi for recent public comments about the case, calling them “exaggerated, if not simply inaccurate” and a violation of local rules.
He ordered prosecutors to formally remind all Justice and Homeland Security employees of restrictions on public statements.
Under Crenshaw’s scheduling order, Abrego Garcia must respond to the government’s motion to quash the Blanche subpoena by Wednesday, with a Justice Department reply due by noon Thursday.
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