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The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday urged a judge to dissolve the injunction that keeps the Trump administration from detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia again so he can quickly be deported to Liberia.
“Dissolution is also warranted because the Court’s Memorandum Order failed to acknowledge that the Court’s own prior injunction against removal is the sole impediment to Petitioner’s prompt removal,” the DOJ wrote in a court filing obtained by Fox News Digital. “The Court cannot both impose the impediment that delays removal and consequently prolongs detention and, at the same time, hold that the resulting detention is impermissibly prolonged.”
It added, “Any attempt by this Court to permanently enjoin the government from exercising its authority to remove the Petitioner from this country is in direct contradiction to established judicial norms, and a clear error of law.”
The administration deported Abrego Garcia, who they claim is a member of MS-13, a year ago to a prison in his native El Salvador, but he was returned to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee related to a 2022 traffic stop despite at first saying the administration had no power to bring him back.
His Lawyers deny he is a member of MS-13.
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia arrives at U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in December. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)
He was released from detention in December on the grounds that the Trump administration had not obtained the final notice of removal order that is needed to deport him to a third country.
Abrego Garcia, 31, has become a flash point in the national immigration debate since last March, when he was deported to El Salvador in violation of a 2019 court order in what Trump administration officials acknowledged was an “administrative error.”
The Supreme Court later ruled that the administration had to work to bring him back to the U.S.
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He has pleaded not guilty on the human smuggling charges and is seeking dismissal of the charges on the grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution.
The 2019 court order prevents Abrego Garcia from being deported to El Salvador after an immigration judge determined he faced danger from a gang that had threatened his family. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager and has been under the supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A protester holds a poster of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in front of the U.S. District Court in Nashville, Tenn. (Getty Images )
Last month, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis agreed to convert her previous emergency order blocking ICE from immediately re-detaining Abrego Garcia into a longer-term form of injunctive relief sought by his lawyers.
She said that the Trump administration failed to provide the court with any “good reason to believe” that they plan to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country in the “reasonably foreseeable future.” Instead, she said, they “made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success.”
Abrego Garcia has said he’s willing to be sent to Costa Rica, but Acting Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons said he will instead be removed to Liberia.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney said in December Abrego was willing to leave for Costa Rica immediately, and that the country had given him asylum status months ago.
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia enters a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Baltimore, Md. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The government’s “persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” Xinis said in December.
The administration asked the judge to rule on its request to have the injunction dissolved by April 17.
Fox News Michael Sinkewicz, Louis Casiano, Breanne Deppisch, and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.