Demonstrators gather outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, to protest the Trump administration's deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador in March in what administration officials said was an administrative error, on July 7, 2025. (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital)
Xinis's order was handed down just three minutes before the judge in Nashville — U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw — issued a separate order on Wednesday, saying that Abrego should be released from criminal custody pending a trial date in January. Judge Crenshaw said in his order that the government failed to provide "any evidence that there is something in Abrego’s history at warrants detention."
The plans, which Xinis ascertained over the course of a multi-day evidentiary hearing earlier this month, capped an exhausting, 19-week legal saga in the case of Abrego Garcia that spanned two continents, multiple federal courts, including the Supreme Court, and inspired countless hours of news coverage.
Still, it ultimately yielded little in the way of new answers, and Xinis likened the process to "nailing Jell-O to a wall," and "beating a frustrated and dead horse," among other things.
"We operate as government of laws," she scolded lawyers for the Trump administration in one of many terse exchanges. "We don’t operate as a government of ’take my word for it.'"
FEDERAL JUDGE EXTENDS ARGUMENTS IN ABREGO GARCIA CASE, SLAMS ICE WITNESS WHO 'KNEW NOTHING'
Demonstrators gather cheering and chanting slogans, during the nationwide "Hands Off!" protest against Trump in Boston, Massachusetts on April 5, 2025. (Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty)
The order followed an extraordinary, multi-day evidentiary hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, where Xinis sparred with Trump administration officials as she attempted to make sense of their remarks and ascertain their next steps as they look to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country as early as Wednesday, July 16.
She said she planned to issue the order before that court date, when Abrego could possibly be released by U.S. Magistrate Judge Waverly Crenshaw.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia, meanwhile, asked the court for more time in ICE custody, citing the many countries he might suffer persecution in — and concerns about what legal status he would have in the third country of removal.
Without legal status in Mexico, Xinis said, it would likely be a "quick road" to being deported by the country's government to El Salvador, in violation of the withholding of removal order.
And in South Sudan, another country DHS is apparently considering, lawyers for Abrego noted the State Department currently has a Level 4 advisory in place discouraging U.S. travel due to violence and armed conflict.
Americans who do travel there should "draft a will" beforehand and designate insurance beneficiaries, according to official guidance on the site.
This still from video from July 22, 2015 show Paula Xinis from US Senate Judiciary Committee (US Senate Judiciary Committee)
The Justice Department, after a short recess, declined to agree, prompting Xinis to proceed with her plans for the TRO.
Xinis told the court that ultimately, "much delta" remains between where they ended things in court, and what she is comfortable with, given the government's actions in the past.
This was apparent on multiple occasions Friday, when Xinis told lawyers for the Trump administration that she "isn't buying" their arguments or doesn't "have faith" in the statements they made — reflecting an erosion of trust that could prove damaging in the longer-term.
The hearings this week capped months of back-and-forth between Xinis and the Trump administration, as she tried, over the course of 17 weeks, to track the status of a single migrant deported erroneously by the Trump administration to El Salvador—and to trace what attempts, if any, they had made facilitate his return to the U.S.
Xinis previously took aim at what she deemed to be the lack of information submitted to the court as part of an expedited discovery process she ordered this year, describing the government's submissions as "vague, evasive and incomplete"— and which she said demonstrated "willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations."
On Friday, she echoed this view. "You have taken the presumption of regularity and you’ve destroyed it, in my view," Xinis said.
Breanne Deppisch is a national politics reporter for Fox News Digital covering the Trump administration, with a focus on the Justice Department, FBI, and other national news.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-limits-trumps-ability-deport-abrego-garcia-after-lengthy-court-battle