DHS sets Oct. 31 target to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, says Liberia will take him

The Trump administration said Friday it’s finally firmed up a country willing to take Kilmar Abrego Garcia off America’s hands, with hopes of booting him out of the U.S. within a week.

Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign revealed the developments in a filing with a federal judge, saying Liberia is a stable democracy with a commitment to human rights. And, he said, it has never appeared on Mr. Abrego Garcia’s list of nations he doesn’t want to be sent to.

“Defendants expect to be able to effectuate removal as soon as October 31,” Mr. Ensign said.

Mr. Abrego Garcia was the subject of a gripping deportation battle last spring, when he was sent to his home country of El Salvador despite an immigration judge’s ruling that that was the one country he couldn’t be sent to.

A federal judge ordered him brought back, but the U.S. resisted, labeling him a dangerous member of the MS-13 gang. Then, with legal pressure mounting, the administration did an about-face and brought him back, only this time to face a criminal charge of smuggling based on a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, where he was found with a carload of illegal immigrants.

A judge in that criminal case ordered his release pending trial, so the government quickly moved to rearrest him as a deportable alien. He has been battling for release from that custody before the same Maryland federal judge who first ordered him brought back from El Salvador.

Under his standing deportation order, Mr. Abrego Garcia can’t be sent to El Salvador because he would face retribution from 18th Street, a rival gang to MS-13. But he can still be sent to what’s known as a “third country” — another nation willing to take him.

He had suggested Costa Rica. The U.S. government has suggested others, but many of those have been clear in rejecting him. That list includes Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana.

Now another African country, Liberia, has entered the picture, and Mr. Ensign said it “has agreed to accept petitioner” — namely Mr. Abrego Garcia.

“Although petitioner has identified more than 20 countries that he purports to fear would persecute or torture him if he were removed there, Liberia is not on that list,” Mr. Ensign said.