Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials cannot re-detain Kilmar Ábrego García, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, allowing the Beltsville resident to remain on supervised release with his family while he awaits trial in a Tennessee criminal court.

Ábrego García, a Salvadoran national and Maryland resident, was freed from immigration detention on Dec. 11 after a nine-month battle with the Trump administration over his improper deportation to his home country.

He was called to the Baltimore ICE field office shortly after for a check-in at which his legal team feared he would be detained once again. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis then issued a temporary restraining order barring ICE from doing so on Dec. 12. In a 10-page ruling Tuesday, she affirmed that order.

Federal immigration enforcement officials have “done nothing to show that Abrego Garcia’s continued detention in ICE custody is consistent with due process,” Xinis wrote.

In a court document filed on Dec. 30, Liana Castano, assistant director for field operations at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said ICE would re-detain Ábrego García if the restraining order was dissolved.

Castano said that Ábrego García was subject to “mandatory detention until the conclusion of his removal proceedings” in accordance with precedent set in a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals in September.

The controversial decision, known as Matter of Yajure Hurtado, subjects anyone who entered the country illegally to detention without access to bond.

As part of efforts to deport Ábrego García, Justice Department attorneys have argued that the order to remove him from the country was not final until earlier this year. That meant they were still within the legal time limit during which they could ship him to a third country, according to government lawyers.

In response, Ábrego García’s attorneys argued that his going back into ICE custody would violate Supreme Court precedent regarding indefinite detention.

His lawyers also argued that the only country where ICE could legally remove Ábrego García to is Costa Rica, which agreed to grant him refugee status last year. The government, however, has since tried to remove Ábrego García to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and Liberia.

The legal saga between Ábrego García and the Trump administration began in March 2025, when he was deported to El Salvador despite a court order that should have prevented officials from doing so.

When he was brought back to the United States in June, Ábrego García was taken into custody in Tennessee, where he faces felony charges for transporting alleged undocumented migrants throughout the country. In Ábrego García’s criminal case in Tennessee, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. said it is possible that Ábrego García was prosecuted vindictively.

Crenshaw released Ábrego García in August and allowed him to return to his family in Maryland while awaiting trial. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Baltimore detained him again just days later. He was held in a privately run detention facility in Pennsylvania until Xinis ordered his release in December.