Abrego Garcia's request to reopen his asylum application is denied
By: Eduardo Cuevas
USA Today
..... An immigration judge has denied Kilmar Abrego Garcia's bid to reopen his request for asylum.
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Immigration Judge Philip Taylor in Baltimore prevented the 30-year-old Salvadoran national and Maryland father on October 1 [2025] from reopening his 2019 asylum case. Abrego Garcia, currently in detention, has 30 days to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
..... The Department of Justice, which oversees the nation's mitigation court system, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Lawyers for Abrego Garcia didn't immediately respond to emailed questions.
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Tricia McLaughlin, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the ruling means Abrego Garcia's final removal order stands.
..... "His lawyers tried to fight his removal from the U.S., but one thing is certain, this Salvadoran man is not going to be able to remain in our country," McLaughlin said in a statement.
..... Abrego Garcia, whose wife and children are American citizens, has lived in Maryland since he was a teen. In 2019, immigration agents arrested him at a Maryland Home depot parking lot. His request for asylum then was denied, but an immigration judge prevented his deportation because of threats he received from a gang in El Salvador.
..... He was working as a union sheet metal worker until he was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March [2025] in what the Trump administration described as an "administrative error." In El Salvador, he was held in a notorious mega-prison, where he said he was tortured. His case became a flash point in the trump administration's sweeping deportation plans. Federal officials refused to return him, accusing him of being a gang member, despite judges; orders that he should be sent back to the United States.
..... The administration then brought him back to face smuggling charges in Tennessee that dated back to a 2022 traffic stop. He has pleaded not guilty.
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As the case remains ongoing, he was released form a Tennessee jail and then promptly placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
..... Abrego Garcia's lawyers in August [2025] petition the Baltimore mitigation court to reopen his asylum claim.