The Trump administration said a Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported and then brought back to the US on criminal charges will “never go free”, even though a judge has ordered his release.
Kilmar Ábrego García was deported in March as part of an immigration crackdown. Government officials said he had been removed in error, but they were unable to bring him back.
Earlier this month, he was sent to the state of Tennessee, where the justice department charged him with human smuggling.
The judge overseeing the case said on Sunday that Mr Ábrego García should be released from legal custody while he awaits trial. But she noted immigration officials would still have the power to detain him.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a dangerous criminal illegal alien,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a social media post on Monday.
“We have said it for months and it remains true to this day: he will never go free on American soil.”
The department oversees immigration enforcement.
Judge Barbara Holmes said in an opinion on Sunday that “the government failed to prove” that Mr Ábrego García endangered any minor victim, was a flight risk or might attempt to obstruct justice.
She also wrote that once the Justice Department released him, immigration officials would probably take Mr Ábrego García into custody as they work to remove him from the country.
In a federal indictment filed in early June, the government accused Mr Ábrego García of participating in a trafficking conspiracy over several years to move undocumented migrants from Texas to other parts of the country.
The charges, which date back to 2016, allege he transported undocumented individuals between Texas and Maryland and other states more than 100 times.
He has pleaded not guilty.
The Trump administration has also accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, though Mr Ábrego García and his lawyers have strongly denied that.
Mr Ábrego García was initially deported on 15 March amid an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, after it invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law that allows presidents to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy country.
He was taken to the Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador, known for its brutal conditions.
While government lawyers initially said he was taken there as a result of an “administrative error”, the Trump administration would not bring him back.
The US Supreme Court ordered the government to “facilitate” his return to his home in the state of Maryland, and a legal battle began over what the court required.
Mr Ábrego García entered the US illegally as a teenager from El Salvador. In 2019, he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities.
An immigration judge granted him protection from deportation on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from local gangs in his home country.
