(BALTIMORE) — As the Department of Homeland Security continues to seek the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the agency said Friday it had identified a new country of removal that has agreed to accept the wrongly deported Salvador native: the West African nation of Liberia.
In a court notice filed Friday, Department of Justice attorneys said DHS has received “diplomatic assurances regarding the treatment of third-country individuals removed to Liberia from the United States and are making the final necessary arrangements for [Abrego Garcia’s] removal.”
According to the notice, DHS expects “to be able to effectuate removal as soon as October 31.”
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. The Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which his family and attorneys deny.
He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, to which he has pleaded not guilty. After being released into the custody of his brother in Maryland pending trial, he was again detained by immigration authorities and is currently being held in Pennsylvania, where the government has told his attorneys that it intends to deport him to a country other than El Salvador.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who has been overseeing Abrego Garcia’s immigration case in Maryland, has currently banned the government from removing him from the United States.
Friday’s notice comes after the DHS served Abrego Garcia a notice of removal to Ghana that the agency subsequently said was “premature.” Before that, DHS said it was planning to deport Abrego Garcia to Eswatini and Uganda.
In response to Friday’s DHS notice, Abrego Garcia’s attorney said the government “has chosen yet another path that feels designed to inflict maximum hardship.”
“Having struck out with Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana, ICE now seeks to deport our client Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia — a country with which he has no connection, thousands of miles from his family and home in Maryland,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told ABC News. “Costa Rica has agreed to accept him as a refugee, and remains a viable and lawful option.”
According to the DOJ, Liberia is “a thriving democracy” and is “committed to the humane treatment of refugees.”
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