Accused MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia can’t be deported to Uganda until at least October, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
US District Judge Paula Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, set an evidentiary hearing for Oct. 6, according to CNN.
The federal judge’s latest order follows her decision to pause the Trump administration’s plan to deport Abrego Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador, to Uganda until he’s given the opportunity to contest his removal.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia at a rally in front of the ICE office in Baltimore on August 25, 2025. AP
Maryland Federal Judge Paula Xinis made the decision to allow Kilmar Abergo Garcia to remain in the US until at least October. Senate Judiciary CommitteeThe deportation pause came down hours after Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Abrego Garcia at the agency’s office in Maryland — following his release from a Tennessee jail last week after facing human smuggling charges.
The Trump administration shipped Abrego Garcia off to El Salvador in June with 260 other reputed gangbangers after President Trump invoked the use of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, which allowed the feds to deport them rapidly without a hearing.
However, his deportation at the time was done despite an “administrative error,” one DOJ offiical said.
Abrego Garcia — who illegally entered the US in 2011 — was also offered a deal to get deported to Costa Rica if he confessed to transporting illegal migrants in the US stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, where he was pulled over on a highway with eight passengers in the car that contained no luggage, his lawyers argued in court documents.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia seen with his wife at the Baltimore ICE facility on August 25, 2025. Getty Images
Alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released from a Tennessee prison on Friday, August 22, 2025. via REUTERS“They’re holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick,” his lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said outside the ICE field office in downtown Baltimore after his latest arrest.
“They’re weaponizing the immigration system in a way that’s completely unconstitutional.”






