The Daily Populous Sunday November 9th, 2025 morning edition
Authored by abcnews.go.com and submitted by AudibleNod

The DOJ said his removal is "in the public interest."

Trump administration moves to dissolve ban on Abrego Garcia's removal to deport him to Liberia

Salvadoran migrant and U.S. resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia speaks as he arrives at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Maryland, August 25, 2025.

The Trump administration has moved to dissolve the ban on Kilmar Abrego Garcia's removal so that it can proceed with his deportation to Liberia.

In a series of filings overnight, government attorneys said that the Salvadoran native's claim of fear of torture or persecution in the African nation was denied after he was interviewed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services last week.

The attorneys for the Department of Justice argued that the preliminary injunction blocking Abrego Garcia’s removal to Liberia should be dissolved because the government received assurances from the government of the West African country that he will not be persecuted or tortured.

The government also said that Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit to stop his removal is improper because he is a member of a separate class action lawsuit in Massachusetts regarding third-country removals. In that case, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to proceed with third-country removals.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura enter a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office on Aug. 25, 2025, in Baltimore, Maryland. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

"Even if the merits were properly presented here, Petitioner's claims fail," the DOJ said. "The Constitution does not entitle Petitioner to process beyond what the political branches have chosen to afford."

Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison -- despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution.

He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

The DOJ called Abrego Garcia a member of MS-13 and said his removal is "in the public interest."

On Friday, Abrego Garcia's attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to block his removal to Liberia until an immigration judge reviews the denial of his reasonable fear claim by USCIS.

"The Government insists that the unreasoned determination of a single immigration officer—who concluded that Abrego Garcia failed to establish that it is "more likely than not" that he will be persecuted or tortured in Liberia— satisfies due process," his attorneys said. "It does not."

Abrego Garcia's attorneys also said that the government has "cycled through" four third-country destinations—Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and now Liberia—without providing "the notice, opportunity to be heard and individualized assessment that due process requires."

They argued that the government has disregarded their client's "statutory designation" of Costa Rica, despite the country's previous assurances that it would accept him and give him refugee or resident status.

Abrego Garcia is currently being held in a detention facility in Pennsylvania.

Reviews-From-Me on November 9th, 2025 at 00:17 UTC »

His lawyers have informed the government that Costa Rica would take him as a refugee, and he'd self deport there, but because Costa Rica won't imprison him indefinitely, they won't allow it. It's not cruel enough, they need him to suffer.

Infinite_Ground1395 on November 9th, 2025 at 00:02 UTC »

The man said he would leave voluntarily and go to Costa Rica, and the government won't let him. This is not about wanting him gone from the country. They could have that result at any time simply by giving him a plane ticket to San José. This is about cruelty, plain and simple. The administration looks incompetent because of how they bungled this whole thing, and rather than just moving on they are taking it out on him.

ChopperChange on November 8th, 2025 at 23:40 UTC »

How many millions of dollars has the Trump administration spent to persecute this one person while simultaneously claiming they have no money to feed Americans?