# Kilmar Abrego Garcia Timeline [[Kilmar Abrego Garcia]] is a Salvadoran sheet-metal apprentice from Maryland whom an immigration judge protected from return to El Salvador in 2019, and whom the [[Second Trump Administration]] sent there anyway on March 15, 2025. What followed ran on three tracks at once: a civil case in Maryland to get him back, a criminal case in Tennessee that began after he won the first one, and an immigration fight over where else he could be sent. This page is the dated record. The narrative and the analysis are on [[Kilmar Abrego Garcia CECOT]] (the removal) and [[Kilmar Abrego Garcia]] (the person). > [!info] Where it stands (October 7, 2026) > He is **free and not in ICE custody**. Judge [[Paula Xinis]]'s order bars his re-detention and his removal to Liberia. The smuggling indictment was **dismissed as vindictive** on May 22, 2026; the government's appeal is pending in the Sixth Circuit (No. 26-5555). The October 6 hearing on Liberia was **canceled without explanation**. Costa Rica, the country he has asked to go to, has said it would take him. **Three tracks, labeled in the text:** *Maryland* = the civil and habeas case before Xinis · *Tennessee* = the criminal case before Judge [[Waverly Crenshaw]] · *Immigration* = the removal-order and third-country fight run by [[ICE]] and the [[Executive Office for Immigration Review]]. --- ## Before the removal (1995–2024) | Date | Event | Significance | |---|---|---| | **July 1995** | Born in the Los Nogales neighborhood of San Salvador | His mother's pupusa business was extorted by the Barrio 18 gang, which later targeted him — the persecution claim the 2019 judge credited | | **c. 2011** | Enters the U.S. without inspection, about age 16 | Court papers place the crossing near McAllen, Texas, around 2011–2012 | | **March 2019** | Stopped with three other men in a Home Depot parking lot in Hyattsville, Maryland; a Prince George's County gang-unit document labels him MS-13, citing his clothing and a confidential informant. No charges | This field sheet is the entire factual basis of the MS-13 label the administration later repeated. The detective who wrote it was suspended weeks later and fired in 2022 over unrelated misconduct | | **2019** | An immigration judge denies bond, crediting the informant's claim; the Board of Immigration Appeals affirms | A bond finding about flight risk and danger, not a ruling that he was a gang member | | **October 10, 2019** | An immigration judge denies asylum (missed one-year deadline) but grants **[[Withholding of Removal]]** to El Salvador, finding a "clear probability of future persecution." The government does not appeal | The protection the March 2025 removal violated. Whether this order also contained a formal removal order became the central question in December 2025 | | **2019–2025** | Released; DHS grants a work permit; he checks in with ICE annually, marries U.S. citizen Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and raises three children in Maryland | Six years of compliance with the system that would later say it had lost track of his protection | | **November 30, 2022** | Tennessee Highway Patrol stops him on I-40 in Putnam County for speeding, driving an SUV with nine passengers. He is not charged and ICE declines to take custody | The stop the 2025 indictment was built on | | **December 22, 2022** | Homeland Security Investigations in Baltimore opens an investigation into him | Opened, then left alone for more than two years | ## 2025 — Removal and return | Date | Event | Significance | |---|---|---| | **January 20 – February 20, 2025** | An executive order directs that cartels and gangs be designated as terrorist groups; on February 20 the State Department designates MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as a [[Foreign Terrorist Organization]] | Turns an unproven 2019 gang label into a terrorism label | | **March 12, 2025** | Stopped and arrested in Baltimore by federal agents with his five-year-old son in the car; moved to Louisiana, then Texas | The arrest that started it | | **March 15, 2025** | Removed to El Salvador on the same day's flights that carried the [[Alien Enemies Act]] deportees (see [[J.G.G. v. Trump]]), and imprisoned in CECOT | The violation of the October 2019 withholding grant | | **March 24, 2025** | *Maryland:* his wife sues in federal court in Maryland (*Abrego Garcia v. Noem*); the case goes to Judge [[Paula Xinis]] | The civil case opens | | **March 31, 2025** | *Maryland:* the government admits in a filing, backed by an ICE field-office declaration, that he was removed "because of an administrative error" — while maintaining he is MS-13 | The admission the administration spent the next year walking back | | **April 1, 2025** | *Tennessee:* HSI-Baltimore **closes** its 2022 investigation: "Investigators have accomplished all goals for this case" | The sentence that later sank the prosecution | | **April 4, 2025** | *Maryland:* Xinis orders the government to "facilitate and effectuate" his return by 11:59 p.m. on April 7 | First return order | | **April 5, 2025** | DOJ places immigration-litigation lawyer Erez Reuveni on leave after he conceded in court that the removal was an error; he is later fired | A candid government lawyer is removed from the case | | **April 7, 2025** | The Fourth Circuit (Thacker, Wilkinson, King) unanimously refuses to stay Xinis's order; Chief Justice [[John Roberts]] enters a temporary administrative stay | The emergency appeal reaches the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] | | **April 10, 2025** | **The Supreme Court** (*Noem v. Abrego Garcia*, No. 24A949), in an unsigned order with no noted dissent, recites the government's concession that the removal "was therefore illegal" and requires the government to "facilitate" his release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure his case is handled as it would have been had he not been wrongly sent there, but sends the "effectuate" language back for clarification. [[Sonia Sotomayor]] writes a statement joined by [[Elena Kagan]] and [[Ketanji Brown Jackson]] | The ruling everyone cites. "Facilitate" became the word the administration then argued meant almost nothing | | **April 11–13, 2025** | *Maryland:* at a status hearing the government says it does not know his location or what steps it has taken; a State Department declaration then confirms he is alive and in CECOT; ICE says he is ineligible for withholding because of MS-13 | The government claims "facilitate" means only removing domestic obstacles | | **April 14, 2025** | In the Oval Office with [[Donald Trump]], [[Nayib Bukele]] calls the idea of returning him "absurd"; Attorney General [[Pam Bondi]] says it is up to El Salvador | The executive branch and its foreign partner perform the refusal on camera | | **April 15, 2025** | *Maryland:* Xinis orders expedited discovery and opens the hearing saying she has "no tolerance for gamesmanship" | The court starts trying to find out what the government has actually done | | **April 17, 2025** | The Fourth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, refuses to pause discovery. Sen. [[Chris Van Hollen]] meets him in San Salvador. *Tennessee:* the **same day**, a supervisor at HSI-Baltimore approves **reopening** the investigation closed sixteen days earlier | The Crenshaw opinion later fixed on this date. The government never called the supervisor to explain it | | **April 21–29, 2025** | *Tennessee:* HSI's Nashville office learns of the 2022 stop from a news article; a senior Justice Department official emails the Nashville U.S. Attorney's office about the case; the prosecutor starts drafting a criminal complaint | The prosecution is assembled inside two weeks of the reopening | | **April 22, 2025** | *Maryland:* Xinis finds a "willful and bad faith refusal" to comply with discovery | | | **May 7, 2025** | *Maryland:* the government invokes the state-secrets privilege over its communications about him | | | **May 21, 2025** | *Tennessee:* a grand jury in Nashville returns a sealed two-count indictment — conspiracy to transport, and transporting, undocumented immigrants for financial gain | Charged while he was still in CECOT and the government was telling a court it could not get him back | | **Late May 2025** | Ben Schrader, criminal chief of the Nashville U.S. Attorney's office, resigns; ABC News, citing sources, reports the indictment decision was the reason. He gave none publicly | | | **June 6, 2025** | Returned to the U.S. and the indictment unsealed. Bondi announces it at a press conference and thanks Bukele; [[Kristi Noem]] and others celebrate the charges; Deputy Attorney General [[Todd Blanche]] publicly ties the investigation to the Maryland judge's questioning of the removal | The return and the prosecution arrive as one event. Blanche's remarks became the core of the vindictiveness ruling | | **June 13, 2025** | *Tennessee:* pleads not guilty | | | **June 22, 2025** | *Tennessee:* Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes denies the government's motion to detain him before trial | First court to test the government's evidence on detention; she found the child-trafficking claim unsupported | | **July 23, 2025** | *Maryland:* Xinis orders that on release he go back to Maryland and that the government give 72 hours' notice before any third-country removal. *Tennessee:* Crenshaw refuses to revoke his pretrial release | Both courts hold the line on the same day | | **August 21, 2025** | *Tennessee / Immigration:* prosecutors offer a deal — stay in jail, plead guilty, serve the sentence, then be deported to **Costa Rica**, which had agreed to take him | The first time Costa Rica appears, attached to a guilty plea | | **August 22, 2025** | Released from jail in Putnam County, Tennessee. Within minutes ICE tells his lawyers it intends to deport him to **Uganda**; that evening the government gives him until Monday morning to take the plea | His lawyers: "The only thing that happened between Thursday — Costa Rica — and Friday — Uganda —" was that he exercised his right to release | | **August 25, 2025** | Reports to the ICE field office in Baltimore and is detained. *Maryland:* Xinis bars his immediate removal | Back in ICE custody, where he stays until December | | **August 27, 2025** | *Maryland:* Xinis bars removal from the continental U.S. until she holds a hearing on his habeas petition | | | **September 5, 2025** | *Immigration:* ICE emails his lawyers: "your new country of removal is Eswatini, Africa" | Second country | | **October 3, 2025** | *Tennessee:* Crenshaw finds a "realistic likelihood" that the prosecution is vindictive and lets the defense seek evidence from administration officials. He calls Blanche's public remarks the most telling evidence | The burden shifts to the government to explain itself | | **Early October 2025** | *Immigration:* DHS names **Ghana**; Ghana's foreign minister says Ghana will not take him | Third country | | **October 24, 2025** | *Immigration:* DHS tells the court it plans to send him to **Liberia** "as soon as Oct. 31" | Fourth country, and the one still pending a year later | | **November 20, 2025** | *Maryland:* the government argues the 2019 judge "meant" to issue a removal order. Xinis: "This doesn't look anything like" one | The question that decides whether ICE can hold him at all | | **December 11, 2025** | *Maryland:* Xinis grants his habeas petition — "No such order of removal exists" — and he is released from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. DHS calls it "naked judicial activism." *Immigration:* that night a senior official in the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge issues an order calling the 2019 decision a "scrivener's error," producing a removal order, and ICE orders him to check in | When a court found no removal order existed, the immigration courts — part of the [[Department of Justice]] — produced one within hours | | **December 12, 2025** | *Maryland:* Xinis issues a temporary restraining order barring his re-detention. He attends the ICE check-in and walks out | | ## 2026 — Dismissal and the Liberia fight | Date | Event | Significance | |---|---|---| | **January 2026** | *Immigration:* the December "scrivener's error" order, styled as a correction of the October 10, 2019 order, becomes final | Gives the government the removal order it lacked | | **February 17, 2026** | *Maryland:* Xinis rules ICE cannot re-detain him: the statutory six-month detention period has run, removal is not reasonably foreseeable, and the African-country notices were an "empty threat" | The re-detention block becomes a court order rather than a temporary one | | **February 26, 2026** | *Tennessee:* evidentiary hearing on vindictiveness. The government calls two witnesses — the HSI Nashville special agent in charge and prosecutor Robert McGuire. It does not call Blanche, the Justice Department official who emailed the office, or the supervisor who approved the reopening | The decision-makers stay off the stand | | **March 2026** | *Immigration:* acting ICE Director [[Todd Lyons]] writes that sending him to Costa Rica would be "prejudicial to the United States" | The country he asked for is ruled out in writing | | **March 20, 2026** | *Maryland:* DHS asks Xinis to lift her order: Liberia will take him and ICE can have a charter flight ready in about five days | | | **April 7, 2026** | *Maryland:* Xinis finds the request "not ripe" and sets a schedule: "Respondents cannot dictate the Court's schedule or the outcome of the motion" | | | **May 12, 2026** | *Maryland:* Xinis keeps the block on re-detention and removal to Liberia, and says the government made "false assertions" about her rulings to the appeals court | | | **May 22, 2026** | ***Tennessee: Crenshaw dismisses the indictment.*** He finds too little evidence of *actual* vindictiveness but holds the **presumption** of vindictiveness unrebutted: Blanche's actions "taint the investigation with a vindictive motive," "the reopening of the closed HSI investigation is the source of the vindictiveness," and "the evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power." DHS again calls it "naked judicial activism" and says "this Salvadorian is not going to remain in our country" | The presumption doctrine did the work: the court never had to prove anyone's motive, only that the government could not explain its own dates. See [[Prosecutorial Discretion]] | | **June 2, 2026** | Homeland Security Secretary [[Markwayne Mullin]], asked by Van Hollen at a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee hearing about Costa Rica: "If he's willing to do that, we'll be happy to send him" | The Secretary contradicts his own agency's March memo in public testimony | | **June 22, 2026** | *Tennessee:* the government files a notice of appeal to the Sixth Circuit | | | **August 8, 2026** | Blanche is confirmed as Attorney General, 50–49 | The official whose statements the court found tainted the case now runs the department appealing it | | **August 17, 2026** | *Tennessee:* DOJ files its Sixth Circuit opening brief (No. 26-5555), arguing career prosecutors acted on the evidence and the dismissal is a "dramatic expansion of the power of courts" to dismiss charges over prosecutors' motives. The defense answers that DOJ refused to call "the actual decision makers, including AG [Todd] Blanche, to testify under oath" | Appeal pending as of this writing | | **October 6, 2026** | *Maryland:* the hearing on Liberia and on the government's motion to dissolve the injunction is canceled after a 15-minute delay. Xinis never takes the bench; no reason is given | Status: unresolved | --- ## Reading the timeline **Three observations.** First, **the prosecution's own paperwork is the case against it.** An investigation opened in December 2022 sat untouched for twenty-eight months, was closed on April 1, 2025 with "all goals" accomplished, and was reopened on April 17 — the day the Fourth Circuit refused to slow down discovery and a U.S. senator was photographed with the man in San Salvador. Crenshaw did not have to find anyone's motive. He only had to lay the dates side by side and ask the government to explain them, and it declined to call the people who could. This is the vault's recurring finding that **a vindictive prosecution is proved by its timeline**. Second, **the destination was a lever, not a logistics problem.** Costa Rica was available on August 21, 2025 if he pleaded guilty, and replaced by Uganda on August 22 when he took release instead. Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and Liberia followed; the first three fell through. Costa Rica — the one country that agreed and that he chose — was ruled "prejudicial to the United States" in March 2026 and then offered again by the Homeland Security Secretary in June. A removal destination that moves every time the person wins in court is a punishment, and two federal judges have now said so in different words. See [[Third-Country Removal]]. Third, **the adjudicator works for the prosecutor's department.** When Xinis ruled on December 11 that no removal order existed, a senior official in the immigration courts produced one that night by calling a six-year-old ruling a clerical error. Immigration judges are employees of the [[Department of Justice]], not Article III judges — see [[Executive Office for Immigration Review]] — and this case shows what that structure permits under pressure. The [[Immigration Removal Pipeline]] did not need to be broken to produce this result. It only needed to be used. ## See Also - [[Kilmar Abrego Garcia]] — the person page - [[Kilmar Abrego Garcia CECOT]] — the March 2025 removal: event page and analysis - [[Paula Xinis]] · [[Waverly Crenshaw]] — the two trial judges - [[Todd Blanche]] — Deputy AG whose statements tainted the prosecution; Attorney General since August 2026 - [[Nayib Bukele]] · [[Chris Van Hollen]] · [[Markwayne Mullin]] · [[Todd Lyons]] - [[Withholding of Removal]] · [[Third-Country Removal]] · [[Habeas Corpus]] · [[Alien Enemies Act]] - [[Prosecutorial Discretion]] · [[Trump Retribution Doctrine]] · [[Judicial Independence]] - [[US Immigration Timeline]] · [[Habeas Corpus Timeline]] · [[Lawfare Timeline]] · [[Authoritarianism and Democratic Backsliding Timeline]]