Greenbelt, Maryland — A hearing before a federal judge over whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man wrongfully deported by the Trump administration last year, can be sent to Liberia was abruptly canceled on Tuesday, leaving the matter unresolved for now.
Abrego Garcia’s legal team was set to ask a federal judge to block his deportation to the West African country, where the administration has attempted to send him in his ongoing legal saga.
But the hearing before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in federal court in Maryland was delayed for 15 minutes before a court official informed the public that it was canceled. The courtroom was emptied shortly afterwards.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told reporters the hearing was “unable to go forward” but did not comment on why. Justice Department attorneys also did not comment.
Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland with his family, was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March 2025, despite a judge’s 2019 order that blocked his deportation to the country on the grounds that he could be harmed by local gangs. The Trump administration had said Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang MS-13, which he has denied.
He was initially held at the Salvadoran mega-prison CECOT and was eventually returned to the U.S. in June 2025 to face criminal human smuggling charges.
In March, the Trump administration said that it was ready to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia, and asked Xinis to dissolve her order that is currently blocking that, or any other removal of Abrego Garcia, from happening.
In court filings, the Trump administration said that Liberia’s government was 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 a matter of days.
Liberia is among the countries that have agreed to accept non-native immigrants from the U.S., and the Trump administration began sending deportees from Latin America there in August. CBS News traveled to Liberia last month and interviewed a number of them. They described being in limbo and feeling stateless. They are unable to return to the U.S., where many have spouses and children, and said they are scared of being persecuted if they go back to their homelands.
Abrego Garcia has said he is willing to go to Costa Rica and designated the country as his preferred country of removal, and Costa Rica has indicated it would provide him refugee status or residency. But at a hearing last year, a Justice Department lawyer said there had not been discussions about deporting him there.
Tuesday’s hearing would have been the first since a federal judge in Tennessee tossed out the criminal indictment charging Abrego Garcia with the alleged crimes, finding that the Justice Department’s prosecution of him was vindictive. The government appealed that order in August.
In court filings ahead of the scheduled hearing, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said that the Trump administration is “trying to abuse its immigration powers to punish” him because their client had the “audacity” to challenge his removal to El Salvador.
“Just as the Government unlawfully wielded its criminal powers against Abrego Garcia, so it seeks to unlawfully exploit its immigration powers against him,” they wrote in a motion for relief in May. “The record leaves no mystery about what is going on. If the Government truly wanted to remove Abrego Garcia from the United States, it would have sent him to Costa Rica in August 2025 when he designated it [as his country of removal].”
The Trump administration has also attempted to re-deport Abrego Garcia to the African nations of Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana, but none of the countries agreed to accept him.
The Justice Department said in court filings that Xinis should deny Abrego Garcia’s motions because “his claims fail as a matter of law.”
Abrego Garcia has remained free from ICE custody as his case has proceeded.
