December 11, 2025
Brett Wilkins
“Since Ábrego García’s return from wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been redetained, again without lawful authority,” US District Judge Paula Xinis wrote in her ruling. “For this reason, the court will grant Ábrego García’s petition for immediate release from ICE custody.”
In early April, Xinis—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Ábrego García’s return to the United States after he was deported in March to the abuse-plagued Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) maximum security prison in El Salvador. This, after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) admitted in a court filing that Ábrego García was wrongfully deported due to what it called an “administrative error.”
The US Supreme Court also weighed in on the case in favor of Xinis’ ruling. However, the Trump administration refused to comply with the judge’s order, arguing that it had no legal obligation to return Ábrego García to the US and could not force El Salvador’s government to free him.
The DOJ dubiously contended that Ábrego García—a 30-year-old Salvadoran father of three who entered the US without authorization when he was a teenager—was a member of the gang MS-13, an allegation based on a statement from an anonymous police informant. The Trump administration deported him despite a judge’s 2019 ruling that he could not be removed to El Salvador because he could be tortured there.
An attorney representing Ábrego García said at the time that his client suffered beatings and “psychological torture” while imprisoned at CECOT.
Ábrego García was transferred to a lower security Salvadoran prison before being sent back to the US on June 6 to face DOJ charges for allegedly transporting undocumented immigrants, to which he pleaded not guilty. He was immediately taken into custody and sent to an immigration detention facility in Tennessee.
On July 23, federal Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Tennessee ruled that Ábrego García must be released from custody pending his trial. That same day, Xinis issued a simultaneous ruling in Ábrego García’s wrongful deportation case blocking ICE from immediately seizing him once released in Tennessee and ordering the government to provide at least 72 hours’ notice before attempting to deport him to any third country.
As Ábrego García was released on August 22, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) informed him that he could be deported to Uganda—one of several nations to which the administration has sought to send him. A bid by Ábrego García to reopen a previous bid for asylum in the US was denied in early October by an immigration judge.
Ábrego García is currently being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania. Responding to Xinis’ latest ruling, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Thursday that “this is naked judicial activism by an Obama-appointed judge.”
“This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” she added.
Advocates for Ábrego García welcomed Thursday’s ruling.
“For months, the Trump administration has sought to deny Kilmar Ábrego García his rights to due process and fair treatment by our justice system,” US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)—who met with Ábrego García in El Salvador in April—said on social media.
“Today’s ruling by Judge Xinis—requiring the government to immediately release him—is a forceful stand for our Constitution and all of our rights,” he added.
Lydia Walther-Rodríguez, chief of organizing and leadership at CASA, hailed what she called “a moment of joy and relief.”
“Kilmar finally gets to return home to his family, where he belongs,” she said. “No one should be separated from their loved ones while fighting for justice.”
Sharon Zhang
The administration is threatening the ICC with yet more sanctions if they do not amend the Rome Statute, which established the court in 2002, to ensure Trump and his administration’s top officials are never prosecuted, Reuters reports, citing a Trump administration official.
U.S. officials are also demanding that the ICC drop its investigations into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over charges related to Gaza, as well as a probe into potential war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
These demands have been made known to the court by the U.S. government, Reuters reports.
“There is growing concern … that in 2029 the ICC will turn its attention to the president, to the vice president, to the secretary of war and others, and pursue prosecutions against them,” the Trump administration official told Reuters. “That is unacceptable, and we will not allow it to happen.”
The official said there is “open chatter” within the international legal community about the possibility of prosecuting Trump and other top officials in relation to international human rights violations.
The official did not specify why the administration would be afraid of such charges being issued.
Experts say that the Trump administration is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in its boat strike campaign and its military support of Israel as it commits genocide in Gaza. Immunity could also effectively grant top Trump officials a blank check to violate international law without fear of being prosecuted as individuals. The ICC says it has not received requests to investigate the U.S. in relation to its boat strike campaign.
“This is rogue state behavior,” said Dylan Williams, the Center for International Policy’s vice president for government affairs, of the demands on social media. “Trump’s current sanctions on the ICC are already hurting the rule of law and human security.”
“Lawmakers should undo them legislatively and repeal the ‘Hague Invasion Act’ — or at least amend it to no longer shield the President and Defense Secretary,” Williams went on, referring to a 2003 law permitting the U.S. to use military force to extract any official from the U.S. or an allied country who is detained by the ICC in the Hague.
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Illinois) said the demands are evidence that the Trump admin sees the writing on the wall with regards to his actions.
“This is the behavior of a man who can hear the footsteps of the defense catching up to him. He’s panicking,” said Casten.
The Trump administration already sanctioned eight ICC judges and prosecutors over its probes into Israeli officials and U.S. troops earlier this year. Further sanctions would be a drastic escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on the ICC.
An amendment to the Rome Statute would be subject to the 125 states that are party to the statute, requiring a significant majority to pass. The U.S. is not a member, but many of its top allies, including the EU, have signed onto the treaty.
The U.S.’s existing sanctions have already taken a massive toll on the targeted judges, who say their personal lives have been effectively upturned by the sanctions, while human rights workers have been completely obstructed in their work to help prosecute people accused of some of the worst human rights violations across the world.
Canadian ICC judge Kimberly Prost, one of the four people sanctioned by the Trump administration in August, told Al Jazeera that she has lost access to all credit cards and bank accounts because of the administration’s financial restrictions. Though banks outside of the U.S. aren’t compelled to comply with the restrictions, Prost pointed out that international banks make business decisions based off of the sanctions, and “don’t want to be involved.”
“How do you order an Uber? How do you get a hotel? How do you do basic transactions?” Prost said. What the sanctioned individuals are “most shocked about is all the companies and services you depend on you don’t think about,” which has made life “very difficult.”
Brett Wilkins
Judge Paula Xinis found that the
Trump administration redetained the Salvadoran father of three “without lawful
authority.”
A federal judge on Thursday
ordered the immediate release of Kilmar Ábrego García—who was wrongfully
deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration earlier this year—from US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
“Since Ábrego García’s return from wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been redetained, again without lawful authority,” US District Judge Paula Xinis wrote in her ruling. “For this reason, the court will grant Ábrego García’s petition for immediate release from ICE custody.”
In early April, Xinis—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Ábrego García’s return to the United States after he was deported in March to the abuse-plagued Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) maximum security prison in El Salvador. This, after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) admitted in a court filing that Ábrego García was wrongfully deported due to what it called an “administrative error.”
The US Supreme Court also weighed in on the case in favor of Xinis’ ruling. However, the Trump administration refused to comply with the judge’s order, arguing that it had no legal obligation to return Ábrego García to the US and could not force El Salvador’s government to free him.
The DOJ dubiously contended that Ábrego García—a 30-year-old Salvadoran father of three who entered the US without authorization when he was a teenager—was a member of the gang MS-13, an allegation based on a statement from an anonymous police informant. The Trump administration deported him despite a judge’s 2019 ruling that he could not be removed to El Salvador because he could be tortured there.
An attorney representing Ábrego García said at the time that his client suffered beatings and “psychological torture” while imprisoned at CECOT.
Ábrego García was transferred to a lower security Salvadoran prison before being sent back to the US on June 6 to face DOJ charges for allegedly transporting undocumented immigrants, to which he pleaded not guilty. He was immediately taken into custody and sent to an immigration detention facility in Tennessee.
On July 23, federal Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Tennessee ruled that Ábrego García must be released from custody pending his trial. That same day, Xinis issued a simultaneous ruling in Ábrego García’s wrongful deportation case blocking ICE from immediately seizing him once released in Tennessee and ordering the government to provide at least 72 hours’ notice before attempting to deport him to any third country.
As Ábrego García was released on August 22, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) informed him that he could be deported to Uganda—one of several nations to which the administration has sought to send him. A bid by Ábrego García to reopen a previous bid for asylum in the US was denied in early October by an immigration judge.
Ábrego García is currently being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania. Responding to Xinis’ latest ruling, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Thursday that “this is naked judicial activism by an Obama-appointed judge.”
“This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” she added.
Advocates for Ábrego García welcomed Thursday’s ruling.
“For months, the Trump administration has sought to deny Kilmar Ábrego García his rights to due process and fair treatment by our justice system,” US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)—who met with Ábrego García in El Salvador in April—said on social media.
“Today’s ruling by Judge Xinis—requiring the government to immediately release him—is a forceful stand for our Constitution and all of our rights,” he added.
Lydia Walther-Rodríguez, chief of organizing and leadership at CASA, hailed what she called “a moment of joy and relief.”
“Kilmar finally gets to return home to his family, where he belongs,” she said. “No one should be separated from their loved ones while fighting for justice.”
“This is rogue state behavior,”
one expert said.
The Trump administration is
reportedly trying to strongarm the International Criminal Court (ICC) into
changing its founding document to carve out an exception for President Donald
Trump and his top officials ensuring that they are never prosecuted by the
court for potential war crimes.The administration is threatening the ICC with yet more sanctions if they do not amend the Rome Statute, which established the court in 2002, to ensure Trump and his administration’s top officials are never prosecuted, Reuters reports, citing a Trump administration official.
U.S. officials are also demanding that the ICC drop its investigations into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over charges related to Gaza, as well as a probe into potential war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
These demands have been made known to the court by the U.S. government, Reuters reports.
“There is growing concern … that in 2029 the ICC will turn its attention to the president, to the vice president, to the secretary of war and others, and pursue prosecutions against them,” the Trump administration official told Reuters. “That is unacceptable, and we will not allow it to happen.”
The official said there is “open chatter” within the international legal community about the possibility of prosecuting Trump and other top officials in relation to international human rights violations.
The official did not specify why the administration would be afraid of such charges being issued.
Experts say that the Trump administration is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in its boat strike campaign and its military support of Israel as it commits genocide in Gaza. Immunity could also effectively grant top Trump officials a blank check to violate international law without fear of being prosecuted as individuals. The ICC says it has not received requests to investigate the U.S. in relation to its boat strike campaign.
“This is rogue state behavior,” said Dylan Williams, the Center for International Policy’s vice president for government affairs, of the demands on social media. “Trump’s current sanctions on the ICC are already hurting the rule of law and human security.”
“Lawmakers should undo them legislatively and repeal the ‘Hague Invasion Act’ — or at least amend it to no longer shield the President and Defense Secretary,” Williams went on, referring to a 2003 law permitting the U.S. to use military force to extract any official from the U.S. or an allied country who is detained by the ICC in the Hague.
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Illinois) said the demands are evidence that the Trump admin sees the writing on the wall with regards to his actions.
“This is the behavior of a man who can hear the footsteps of the defense catching up to him. He’s panicking,” said Casten.
The Trump administration already sanctioned eight ICC judges and prosecutors over its probes into Israeli officials and U.S. troops earlier this year. Further sanctions would be a drastic escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on the ICC.
An amendment to the Rome Statute would be subject to the 125 states that are party to the statute, requiring a significant majority to pass. The U.S. is not a member, but many of its top allies, including the EU, have signed onto the treaty.
The U.S.’s existing sanctions have already taken a massive toll on the targeted judges, who say their personal lives have been effectively upturned by the sanctions, while human rights workers have been completely obstructed in their work to help prosecute people accused of some of the worst human rights violations across the world.
Canadian ICC judge Kimberly Prost, one of the four people sanctioned by the Trump administration in August, told Al Jazeera that she has lost access to all credit cards and bank accounts because of the administration’s financial restrictions. Though banks outside of the U.S. aren’t compelled to comply with the restrictions, Prost pointed out that international banks make business decisions based off of the sanctions, and “don’t want to be involved.”
“How do you order an Uber? How do you get a hotel? How do you do basic transactions?” Prost said. What the sanctioned individuals are “most shocked about is all the companies and services you depend on you don’t think about,” which has made life “very difficult.”
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