Washington, Dec 11 (EFE).- Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Ábrego García, who was returned to the United States after an irregular deportation to El Salvador, was released this Thursday from a migrant center in Pennsylvania by order of a judge, his lawyer informed EFE. The lawyer, Sean Hecker, confirmed the release hours after Paula Xinis, a federal judge in Maryland, ordered Ábrego to be released "immediately" from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center, as his detention was carried out "without legal authority." The Salvadoran, a Maryland resident, was deported in March to El Salvador and imprisoned at the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (Cecot), the maximum-security prison built by the Nayib Bukele government, despite a U.S. judge having ordered his expulsion. After a lengthy legal battle with the Donald Trump administration, which accuses him of human trafficking and being a gang member, Ábrego was returned in June to the United States to face federal charges. Ábrego García had been at the Moshannon Valley processing center in Pennsylvania, and the U.S. government was seeking a way to deport him to an African country, as it cannot send him back to El Salvador. The magistrate ruled that "he has remained detained by ICE to carry out his expulsion to a third country without there being a legal deportation order." "The conduct of the defendants (the U.S. government) in recent months contradicts that his detention had as its fundamental objective to carry out the expulsion, which further reinforces the idea that Ábrego García should not remain detained," Xinis wrote. Although released from ICE custody, the Salvadoran is still subject to the pretrial release imposed by a judge in Tennessee, pending a trial for human trafficking.
