Trump administration ready to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia, asks judge to lift block

The Trump administration said it is ready to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia and asked U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis to dissolve her order blocking that from happening. In a motion filed Friday, the Department of Homeland Security said the order is the only impediment currently preventing the U.S. from carrying out Abrego Garcia’s deportation. 

Legal filings submitted by the administration indicated that Liberia’s government remains willing to accept Abrego Garcia and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement could arrange a charter plane to send him to the West African country in roughly five days. 

In a declaration, an ICE official said the agency is “confident that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal would be imminent” if Xinis were to lift her order. The administration similarly said in its new court filing that the government is prepared to remove Abrego Garcia from the U.S. “in an extremely expeditious manner” once it has been dissolved, and asked that Xinis issue a ruling on the motion by April 17.

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who had been living in Maryland with his family, was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March 2025. The Trump administration had said Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang MS-13, which Abrego Garcia has denied. 

He was set to be imprisoned at the Salvadoran mega-prison CECOT, despite a judge’s 2019 order that blocked his deportation there on the grounds that he could be harmed by local gangs. Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. last summer to face criminal charges for human smuggling, tied to allegations accusing him of transporting immigrants into the U.S. illegally. 

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which his attorneys have argued are vindictive because of a civil lawsuit Abrego Garcia filed against the Trump administration that successfully challenged his removal.