• The judge gave the administration until Monday night to return Abrego Garcia to the United States from the Salvadoran prison where he is being held.
• Abrego Garcia’s family and supporters celebrated the ruling, but his attorney stressed the need for the government to comply with the order.
• The Trump administration has not yet responded to the judge’s decision.

GREENBELT, Md. ― In a major blow to the Trump administration, a federal judge ruled Friday the government acted illegally when it deported a Maryland father to El Salvador and ordered that he must be returned to the United States.

“This was an illegal act,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland said of the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Xinis gave the administration until 11:59 p.m. Monday to remove Abrego Garcia from the violent El Salvador prison where he is being held and bring him back to the United States.

Abrego Garcia, 29, was among the hundreds of alleged members of crime gangs MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua the government expelled from the U.S. to El Salvador last month.

Abrego Garcia, who had fled El Salvador as a teenager to escape gang violence, was pulled over by federal immigration agents near his home in Beltsville, Maryland, on March 12 and arrested. Three days later, he was expelled and sent back to El Salvador even though he had won a court order six years earlier barring his removal.

The Trump administration acknowledged in court records earlier this week that his deportation was a mistake, which it attributed to an “administrative error.” But the U.S. government says it has no jurisdiction to order his return because he is in a foreign country.

Abrego Garica’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and their 5-year-old son, who are both U.S. citizens, sued the government demanding his return.

During a hearing on Friday, Xinis ripped into Justice Department lawyers over Abrego Garcia’s arrest and questioned the government’s claim it could not get him back. If federal authorities were able to strike terms and conditions for his placement in El Salvador, “then certainly they have the functional control to unwind the decision – the wrong decision,” she said.

Erez Reuveni, the Justice Department’s attorney, conceded that Abrego Garica should not have been expelled and said he also had questioned why the government could not bring him back.

“My answer to a lot of these questions is going to be frustrating, and I am frustrated,” Reuveni said.

Vasquez Sura sat at a table with attorneys during Friday’s hearing, a box of tissues next to her. Afterward, she left the courthouse to applause from supporters who had gathered outside to call for Abrego Garcia’s return.

“We will continue this fight to get my husband back,” Vasquez Sura said in a brief news conference following the judge’s decision.

The Trump administration had no immediate response to the decision.

The court order protecting Abrego Garcia from removal from the United States grew out of an earlier case.

In March 2019, he was arrested outside a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland, where he was looking for work, after a confidential informant testified that he was an active member of the MS-13 gang, according to government lawyers. His attorneys say he was not a member of MS-13, and the government offered scant evidence to back up its claim.

‘Devastated and confused’: A Maryland dad was sent to El Salvador prison by mistake. Can his community get him back?

A court ordered him deported to El Salvador, but Abrego Garcia applied for asylum, asking for protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In court filings, he said he had come to the United States because the Barrio 18 gang, which is rivals with MS-13, was extorting and threatening him and his family for their pupusa business in their San Salvador neighborhood and pressuring him to join the gang.

A U.S. immigration judge found he was deportable but issued an order in October 2019 that protected him from removal.

Abrego Garcia’s arrest and deportation to El Salvador has been condemned by immigrant rights advocates and others.

Minutes before Friday’s hearing, chants led by people in pink vests – reading “Rapid Response Choir” –could be heard from the rally gathered outside the federal courthouse in suburban Maryland. A few police officers stood to the side. The chants, calling for Abrego Garcia’s release, continued after the hearing began.

Attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, who represented the family during the hearing, said they’ve had no contact Abrego Garcia, nor have attorneys the family hired in El Salvador.

Sandoval-Moshenberg urged the government to comply with the order to bring Abrego Garcia back. He also said it’d be unlikely Abrego Garcia would get sent to another country, given there’s a court order blocking the administration from deporting people to countries they’re not from.

But Sandoval-Moshenberg said he wouldn’t declare victory until Abrego Garcia is back in the U.S.

Abrego Garcia’s supporters, however, celebrated the judge’s ruling.

“This government tried to disappear Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” said the Rev. Michael Vanacore of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in nearby Wheaton, Maryland. “It was very important to hear his name read aloud in positive judgment by the court, saying that he should be returned.”

At the rally, Vanacore recited a phrase familiar to other Latinos whose loved ones are gone: Saying “presente” after the missing person’s name.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, presente,” he said in Spanish, pleading to God for his safe return.

Follow Eduardo Cuevas on X @eduardomcuevas and Michael Collins @mcollinsNEWS.