GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A hearing for Kilmar Ábrego Garcia which was expected to determine whether the man mistakenly sent by the Trump administration to El Salvador would be deported to Liberia was abruptly canceled Tuesday for reasons that were not immediately clear.
The government is moving to vacate a preliminary injunction put in place by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis preventing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining and deporting Ábrego Garcia to the West African country of Liberia. His legal team is seeking to make the injunction permanent. The judge left previous orders in place last December and ordered him released from custody.
Abrego Garcia was in the courtroom Tuesday but Judge Xinis never took the bench. Instead attorneys for both sides left the courtroom about five minutes before the hearing was supposed to begin. They held a 15-minute conference and then the hearing was canceled. No announcement was made in court as to why the hearing was canceled.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, a lawyer for Ábrego Garcia, told media outside the courthouse simply that the hearing could not happen Tuesday and that an update to the case would be posted on the court docket in the next few days. He shed no light as to why the hearing was cancelled.
“Unfortunately the court was unable to go forward today,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.